Free Speech Wins a Small Victory Against Conservatives

and Autocratic Jeff (Too Racist to be Judge) Sessions

Incredible as it may sound, a woman who laughed at a rediculous answer to a question by AG Jeff Beau Sessions was charged with a criminal act.

During Mr. Sessions’s confirmation hearing, Ms. Fairooz, who at one point held a sign that said, “Refugees Welcome — Stop Sessions,” laughed when Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama, said Mr. Sessions’s record of “treating all Americans equally under the law is clear and well-documented.”

Ms. Fairooz was immediately removed by officers. She did not go easily. Her outburst as she was dragged out of the room — “Jeff Sessions is evil!” she yelled, among other things — was captured on video and used against her at trial.

But in a surprise move the prosecutors have dropped the case.

William Miller, a spokesman for the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, said in statement on Tuesday that his office dismissed the case against Ms. Fairooz on Monday, but he declined to comment further because the office does not discuss charging decisions.

The why is pretty obvious. Had the government prevailed and won, which it did in a first trial, the appellate judge would have laughed the government out of the courtroom. So the defendant won, not because she was right, which she was, but because the prosecution feared humiliation. Still, a win is a win.