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Code Pink protesters at Attorney General Jeff Sessions' confirmation hearing.

Every time I read the story, I thought it was fake news.

This can't actually be happening, right?

That's what I thought when I read that a woman was actually being prosecuted by the United States Justice Department of disrupting Jeff Sessions' attorney general Senate confirmation hearings by laughing at a remark made by Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, and that two other women were also being prosecuted for "parading or demonstrating" dressed as Ku Klux Klan members during those hearings.

Then I read on Thursday that the three women were convicted of the charges and might actually be sentenced to prison today for their "crimes."

My first thought?

Fake justice.

And a waste of your tax dollars.

Desiree Fairooz, Tighe Barry and Lenny Bianchi are scheduled to stand today before District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Robert Morin Friday and face the possibility of going to jail for up to a year for laughing at the January Senate hearing and parading, disrupting and picketing at the Capital. [The latter charges, misdemeanors, were apparently prompted by the women's' actions after they were escorted from the hearing room.]

That's laughable.

That's fake justice under Jeff Sessions.

All three women are part of the Code Pink movement, a grassroots, women-led effort to promote social justice and human rights. A movement that can certainly be disruptive when fighting for a cause.

Indeed, Fairooz, as is widely known, has a history of disruptive action, particularly in the presence of high-profile public officials. In Oct 2007, with her hands covered in fake "blood" and screaming "War criminal!", she jumped in front of Condoleezza Rice just before the then-Secretary of State was to testify on Capitol Hill.

She and other activists were ordered and escorted out of that hearing. But in the hallway, she smeared red paint against the walls, which earned legal charges of "defacing government property" and "assaulting a federal officer." Fairooz's actions that day certainly merited some repercussions; ultimately, she was hit with a five-day suspended sentence for disorderly conduct.

Apparently laughing during a congressional is a much more egregious crime--at least to Sessions and his fake-justice minions.

During the trial, justice department prosecutors contended the three women charged were going to "impede, disrupt and disturb the order conduct" of the hearings. Please.

A lot of attention was given to how loudly Fairooz laughed and whether her chuckle somehow impeded, disrupted and disturbed the hearings.

The incident was sparked by a remark made by Shelby in support of Sessions. In his opening statement, Shelby touted that Sessions' record of "treating all Americans equally under the law is clear and well-documented." (Never mind that Shelby, once a Democrat, ran an ad years back inferring Sessions had referred to the Klan as "good ole boys.")

Should I be charged, too?!

I LOL'd at that statement myself, although I was sitting in my living room, not in the confirmation hearing room.

Faitroos was there. Shelby didn't flinch at her chuckle or guffaw (take your pick), but Sessions' prosecutors said during the trial that the laugh was "disorderly and disruptive conduct" designed to "impede, disrupt, and disturb the orderly conduct" of the hearings.

For some unfathomable reasons, a jury believed them.

Capitol Hill police officer Katherine Coronado, who was among the officers who escorted Fairooz out of the room, testified that she saw people turn around in response to the Fairooz, whom she said laughed "very loudly".

OMG, lock her up!

I don't have a position on the shock-tactics often used by Fairooz and her Code Pink colleagues. But I do know this: our nation's history, Birmingham's history, was often, if not mostly, changed by the actions of "disrupters"--dating back to those American Colonial Society who dared to rail against the British Parliament for "taxation without representation" of those citizens in Massachusetts, one of the original 13 colonies.

They dumped crates of taxed tea into the Boston Harbor, sparking actions and tensions that, of course, led to the American Revolution, led to the freedoms we enjoy--and, in many cases, still fight for every day.

Disrupters in Birmingham not only crippled, and ended, legal segregation throughout the city's businesses, but laid the groundwork for the movement that ultimately killed segregation in schools, businesses and public spaces nationwide.

Disrupters R Us

We need disrupters.

Whether we like them of not, whether we agree with them or not, we need disrupters to shake up our own lethargy, to scream, if necessary, in the faces of our leaders, to even laugh at the absurdities that often come from their mouths.

We need disrupters to, as the Quakers first uttered in the 1950s, "speak truth to power."

Defense attorneys for Fairooz and the other two women are trying to persuade Judge Morin to toss the ridiculous verdict. Sessions's minions are hoping the Judge upholds the jurors' verdict.

It was a fake verdict that is a product of Jeff Sessions' fake justice.