Katherine Coronado of the U.S. Capitol Police was in her second week on the job when she was assigned to keep watch over Sessions’ confirmation hearing on Jan. 10. Coronado was involved in the arrest of Desiree Fairooz, an activist affiliated with the group Code Pink, after Fairooz laughed when Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said that Sessions’ record of “treating all Americans equally under the law is clear and well-documented.” (Sessions had been rejected as a federal judge in the 1980s because of concerns about his views on race, and back when he was still a Democrat, Shelby himself actually ran an ad suggesting Sessions had called the Ku Klux Klan “good ole boys.”)This is a pretty good example of why I hold Congress, especially Congressional Republicans, to be among the lowest slime on the continent. Shelby uttered a bald-faced lie and got laughed at. I'm surprised that the entire room didn't break out in laughter.
Fairooz was seated in the back of the room, and her laugh did not interrupt Shelby’s introductory speech. But, according to the government, the laugh amounted to willful “disorderly and disruptive conduct” intended to “impede, disrupt, and disturb the orderly conduct” of congressional proceedings. The government also charged her with a separate misdemeanor for allegedly parading, demonstrating or picketing within a Capitol, evidently for her actions after she was being escorted from the room.
More troubling, if it's OK to laugh when one of the hearing participants tells a joke, but it's not OK to laugh when they say something that is ludicrous, then we're getting into content-specific charges that relate to the freedom of speech, which is a pretty damn iffy area.
5 comments:
Remember when they frog-marched Joe Wilson out of the joint session of congress for yelling "You lie!" at the president? Yeah, me neither...
-Doug in Oakland
I am laughing, [sneering] at the "superiority."
See, there is spin, and then there are lies.
You link is the latter.
The truth:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/no-a-woman-wasnt-convicted-today-simply-for-laughing-during-jeff-sessions-confirmation-hearing/article/2622078
But that headline doesn't get Haters to read it. Plus it doesn't fit your preconceptions. And notice that she was convicted by a JURY.
Oh, please, B. You give me crap when I link to the Guardian, but you link to the Washigton Examiner?
Were you so reverent towards a jury's decision back when a certain ex-football player and movie star was acquitted?
(Or maybe you're not familiar with the number of times jury verdicts have been overturned on appeal.)
Read the article. Look at what they found her guilty on.
'Twasn't laughing. It was her behavior after.
Was it fair or legal to tell her to leave after she laughed? I dunno. But after that, once she was asked to leave, it was disturbing the peace because she wouldn't leave. At that point she was in the wrong.
Like you have pointed out, just because the source is biased, doesn't mean it is wrong all of the time.
Sorry if this interrupts your hate of Sessions with reality. Thing is, you have ample reason to hate him.....you don't have to make shit like this up in order to justify it.
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