Laughable Justice

During the confirmation hearings for Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, his Senate colleague and fellow Alabaman Richard Shelby said that Sessions’ history of “treating all Americans equally under the law is clear and well-documented.” Did you just laugh? Desiree Fairooz did.

Fairooz was in attendance as a member of the Code Pink activists group to protest Sessions’ nomination. Her laughter can barely be heard in footage of the event. Of course conservatives didn’t find it funny at all probably because it wasn’t a black joke.

The Justice Department wasn’t amused either and is literally prosecuting her for laughing at their leader. During her trial this week Session’s Justice Department argued that “the laugh amounted to willful ‘disorderly and disruptive conduct’ intended to ‘impede, disrupt, and disturb the orderly conduct’ of congressional proceedings.” They claim that “the laugh was extraordinarily disruptive,” with a US Capitol Police officer claiming that Fairooz laughed “very loudly and people in the hearings turned around when they heard it.” Video footage proves that’s not true.

The jury threw out the charges against her laughing and instead convicted her for disrupting the hearing, which she only did after a Capitol policeman grabbed her and threw her out.

Fairooz faces a fine and actual jail time for laughing at Jeff Sessions which is really going to suck for the rest of us because laughing at Jeff Sessions is the only way to prevent yourself from the night terrors that he’s actually in charge of our Justice Department. You would think that by this point in his life that Sessions would be used to people laughing at him.

There are times when the humorless Justice Department does lighten up. An example from this week is their refusal to charge two white police officers who shot and killed Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The officers shot Sterling, who is black, six times. The incident was caught on video which went viral. The final shots were into Sterling’s back. The two officers had Sterling pinned to the ground when they shot him.

In the cops’ defense, neither one was laughing.

Creative note: One of you guys commented on this blog the last time I picked on Jeff Sessions and expressed unhappiness that I made short jokes and referred to Sessions as “elfish.”

When I first started at The Free Lance-Star my editor got upset with me one day for drawing a large city councilman as a large person. He said that we don’t make fun of people’s appearances. I pointed out that every cartoon he ever approved had made fun of someone’s appearance.

Jeff Sessions isn’t elfish just for his height. He’s elfish partly for his height, or lack of, his ears, and his stature and personality. I’m going to keep drawing sessions in high chairs and sitting and standing on books. Not because I’m Randy Newman and think short people “got no reason to live,” but because it’s too much fun.

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