Update (5/3/17): A jury has found Derisee Fairooz and two other activists guilty on charges they disrupted Jeff Sessions' confirmation hearing. Fairooz, who says all she did was laugh at one point in a senator's opening statement, could face up to a year in prison.

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A 61-year-old woman who laughed during Jeff Sessions' confirmation hearing in January is now facing charges, HuffPost reports. Prosecutors are pressing ahead with allegations of "disorderly and disruptive conduct" intended to "impede, disrupt, and disturb the orderly conduct" of the proceedings, all because Desiree Fairooz, an activist with Code Pink, laughed when Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama said that Sessions' record of "treating all Americans equally under the law is clear and well-documented."

Sessions was rejected as a federal judicial nominee in the 1980s because of concerns about his attitudes on race, some of which were illustrated in a thunderous letter of opposition from Coretta Scott King. While he was still a Democrat, Shelby even ran an ad against Sessions suggesting he'd called the Ku Klux Klan "good ole boys," according to HuffPost. But when Shelby completely reversed himself and embraced Sessions' record on equality, and Fairooz found the whole routine a bit rich, she ended up in quite a bit of trouble—despite the fact that, in HuffPost reporter Ryan J. Reilly's account, she was seated in the back of the room and did not disrupt Shelby's statement or the proceedings.

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Another protester escorted out of Sessions hearing. Her original offense appeared to be simply laughing. pic.twitter.com/p6lWzBVFRW — Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) January 10, 2017

At trial, the arresting officer, Katherine Coronado of the U.S. Capitol Police—a rookie in her second week on the job at the time, who'd never worked a hearing before—claimed Fairooz laughed "very loudly" and that other people turned around to look in response. Fairooz's defense included showing a video of the incident, and of another moment when the audience laughed at Sessions' joke about his wife. The prosecutor, Jason Covert, argued that it was OK for the audience to laugh at the joke, but not for Fairooz to laugh at Shelby's claim about Sessions' sterling record on civil rights. Via HuffPost:

"Is that funny?" Covert asked Officer Coronado of Shelby's praise of Sessions. "Is that a joke to you?" Coronado did not think it was.

That's right: The authorities will now decide when it's OK for you to laugh. Failure to comply with Laugh Laws will result in arrest and trial. But in true Orwellian splendor, we're told it's free speech on college campuses that's truly under threat.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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