AUTHORITARISM: Woman who protested against Jeff Sessions faces time in prison just for laughing

Back on January 10, during Jeff Session's confirmation hearing as Attorney General, a group of protesters were taken out of the room where the confirmation hearing was taking place. Some were arrested. Why? Because one of them, a woman, laughed for 3 seconds when a Senator told Sessions that Sessions had an "extensive record of treating all Americans equally under the law", which is clearly false, as Sessions has been denounced for being a racist even by Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr.'s widow.

Because of the giggling, the protesters were taken out of the room by the police. But the woman who laughed, Desiree Fairooz, was charged with two counts of "unlawful conduct" on capitol grounds and will be sentenced in June. The punishment could be time in prison.

But there is one problem with that: According to The Guardian, prior to her giggling, the audience in the room had laughed with a joke made by Sessions.

Interestingly, and in a clear case of hypocrisy, back in April Sessions was criticized for saying he could not believe that "an island in the Pacific" could block Donald Trump's Muslim ban, referring to the Hawaii Judge that blocked the illegal travel ban. When Sessions was confronted by the media about it, he said this: “Nobody has a sense of humour any more.”

That's Trump's America for you: A kind of authoritarism in which you can't even laugh for 3 seconds.