A note on my novels
Because of changes to the terms on Draft2Digital, which acquired Smashwords, my e-books are no longer available there. I’m looking for alternatives and will let you know when they’re available again. Amazon should be unaffected.
The Sanity Project
ICE watching in Haverhill
Donald Trump has refused to rule out sending ICE agents to the polls, even though sending armed federal agents to a polling place is illegal. They wouldn’t have to do anything beyond being there to intimidate voters, and their presence in well-chosen places could influence an election’s outcome.
We can discourage it by making sure there are observers at high-risk locations to record them if they show up. Big Brother, knowing he’s the one being watched, may be more reluctant to follow through. Knowing this, on September 1 I went to the City Hall in Haverhill, Mass., a polling place for the state primary. It’s less likely ICE would interfere with the primary, but it’s good practice and establishes my commitment for November. Next week I have similar plans for the New Hampshire primary, though I haven’t decided where. I chose the Haverhill location because a valued friend was working at the polls there.
It was boring work, which is a good thing. It was also miserable weather. Part way through the morning, I had to go home and change into dry socks. I was standing intermittently for four hours, which says I’m in better shape than I thought. Forgetting that ultraviolet doesn’t care about clouds, I got a slight sunburn on my ear.
Did I accomplish anything? I made a few people aware someone was standing by with a camera in case anything nasty happened. While I was there, I had a friendly conversation with the cop who was stationed there and told some of the poll workers what I was doing; my friend probably explained further when I wasn’t there. I went outside and got some exercise. On top of that, for a few hours I was pushing back against the intimidation of Americans.
It was worth it. It will be worth it again next week, even if it’s as boring as I hope it will be.
Thoughts on Don Giovanni
This article originally appeared on Leaflet, where it hasn’t gotten much traffic. It’s a decent article, so I’m reposting it here with some small tweaks.
Don Giovanni is one of Mozart’s most popular operas. The title character is clearly the villain; he attempts rape and commits a murder in the first scene, and he has a long history of seducing women and walking away from them. In the final scene, though, something strange happens. It’s easy to feel sympathy for him. He hasn’t actually earned any, so what’s happening?
Here’s a quick summary for anyone unfamiliar with the opera. Don Giovanni (the Italian name for Don Juan) is driven off by Donna Anna, whom he had just attacked (“date rape” would be the modern term). Her father, the Commendatore, challenges him, and Don Giovanni easily kills the older man. Later on, Giovanni finds a statue of the Commendatore, which speaks to him. He invites the statue to dinner. The Commendatore’s statue walks into Giovanni’s home and demands that he repent. Giovanni refuses, and demons drag him to Hell.
What happens between these scenes establishes that Don Giovanni is a scoundrel. Why, then, object to his damnation? (Aside from objections to the idea of eternal punishment, which aren’t the point here.) Because Mozart was brilliant and used his musical skills to flip the moral landscape. (He did that in The Magic Flute as well, though the situation there is quite different.)
Leporello’s panic on seeing the Commendatore sets the mood. The music when he enters is some of the most terrifying Mozart wrote. Giovanni responds politely and courageously, even when the statue grasps his hand with an unbreakable, freezing grip.
While the statue supposedly is a messenger from heaven, offering a last chance for salvation, he feels like an emissary from Hell. Don Giovanni is a human being, even if he’s a very bad one, standing up to a statue animated by supernatural forces. If we’re supposed to understand that these forces are doing God’s dirty work for him, that’s even worse. We side with human courage and defiance.
After his scream dies away, the other characters enter, and Mozart tries to reset the moral balance. The concluding scene is weak by comparison. Maybe that was his intention.
If you find yourself echoing Giovanni’s cries of “No!” it’s all right. It doesn’t mean you approve of people who do what he did. It just means that you understand and respond to courage, even when it’s misapplied, and especially when Mozart is underscoring the conflict with his music.
On another part of the opera: In Taking Funny Music Seriously (an excellent book, by the way), author Lily E. Hirsch takes issue with Leporello’s “Madamina” aria, where he details his master’s activities. Hirsch says the aria is “more disgusting and disturbing than funny, though [Mozart’s] librettist must of course share some of the blame.” She claims there’s an “assumption that the titular character is somehow a hero.”
Elsewhere in the book, she has a whole chapter on funny songs about death, including a couple by Tom Lehrer on a nuclear holocaust, and she doesn’t call them “disgusting and disturbing.” The opera shows Giovanni being repeatedly cruel and getting his comeuppance, so it would take a warped mind to consider him a hero. I’ve just discussed the final scene, where he draws some sympathy but still isn’t a hero.
The song contributes to the picture of the protagonist as indifferent to the people he harms. The humor is in the gross exaggeration, combined with Leporello’s meticulous record-keeping. In Spain alone, he’s recorded 1,003 conquests, all written down in the book. These numbers are part of the setup for a well-deserved downfall.
Judicial Watch and the techniques of deception
I’ve written before on deceptive, demanding mailings and more of the same from Judicial Watch, an anti-immigrant organization. But they were mild compared to a truly evil one I received yesterday, painting Donald Trump as the innocent victim of the “deep state.” Evil isn’t news, but I’d like to use it to get some insight into just how it operates. To fight the enemies of American liberties, you have to know how they think.
The creator of the mailing, it says, is Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch. The central claim is that a list of prominent people, including three past presidents, “all knew that President Trump was innocent, but they smeared and spied on him anyway. It was worse than Watergate … far worse. President Trump was and is a Deep State crime victim, and all the perpetrators of this crime must be held accountable!” (Ellipses and emphasis in these quotations are from the original, unless otherwise indicated.)
The obvious question is, what is Trump innocent of? He has been accused of many things, often with strong evidence, sometimes with very little. However, the letter doesn’t name any charge against him. It gives some clues: “And as far as James Comey is concerned, the evidence is overwhelming that he violated the law, debased his high office and further corrupted the Federal Bureau of Investigation by deploying resources and personnel to pursue the leftist agenda of the ‘permanent government’ in Washington, DC.”
This refers to the 2017 FBI investigation of alleged Russian influence in the 2016 election. Comey was the head of the FBI at the time, before being fired by Trump later that year. He testified to Congress in 2020 about the investigation and was indicted in 2025 on claims of lying and obstruction. He testified that he didn’t authorize public disclosure of related information, although information had been leaked without his approval. The investigation concluded in 2019 and reported that while Russian operatives tried to support Trump’s campaign, it could not say that the Trump campaign knowingly helped the effort. It noted that a sitting president couldn’t be indicted anyway.
It’s possible Comey authorized the leak and then denied it, but the investigation didn’t make any accusations against Trump. The charges against Comey were dismissed.
Let’s look at how Judicial Watch covered this. A key technique was vagueness; it counted on readers not to remember these events in detail. (I had to do a lot of searches to get all that information.) It didn’t say what Comey was indicted for, nor that the charges were dismissed. Very likely it was counting on public confusion over the more recent and even more absurd indictment of Comey for taking a picture of seashells. It aims to make the reader think that Comey used the investigation to bring baseless accusations against Trump.
But the target of the mailing isn’t just Comey. It asks the recipients to “sign the enclosed citizen petition to the U.S. Attorney General demanding immediate investigations into all government officials implicated in the attempted ‘coup’ against President Donald Trump and our constitutional republic.” The names mentioned include Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe, and Peter Strzok. It claims that “I’m sure their names ring a bell with you.” They don’t with me, that’s for sure. Back to the research… Strzok got a $1.2 million settlement and Page $800,000 from the DoJ for violating their privacy rights. McCabe also received a settlement for being improperly fired as FBI deputy director.
Why would Judicial Watch hope the readers would remember that the Trump administration had to pay out for what it did? It’s counting on people feeling embarrassed that they don’t remember. That’s really the mailing’s basic technique: saying next to nothing and pushing the reader to invent details out of fear of feeling ignorant.
The mailing calls for investigation of “Deep State officials” for “baseless smear campaigns.” If these alleged campaigns are legally actionable, they must consist of intentionally false statements. No specific falsehoods, alleged or real, are cited. In fact, no specific accusations against Trump are cited!
It’s mentioned that government “departments and offices … even raided his [Trump’s] Mar-a-Logo home!” What isn’t mentioned is that he was illegally holding highly sensitive classified government documents after leaving office and was accused of concealing them to frustrate the investigation. Again, it’s counting on readers not to remember the details.
To be sure, sloppiness about details is endemic in journalism today. But when it’s this systematic and is part of an emotion-laden call to investigate alleged “crimes” by those who have crossed Trump, it’s hard to call it anything but deliberate deception. When you add in Judicial Watch’s record of dishonesty, it has no claim to the benefit of the doubt.
Most people don’t have the time to look up information. Vagueness avoids the risk of being caught in a straight-out lie. But occasional Freudian slips come through. “It was worse than Watergate … far worse. President Trump was and is a Deep State crime victim.” In the Watergate scandal, President Nixon was caught participating in a criminal scheme and forced to resign, so Judicial Watch seems to be saying that Trump is a greater victim than Nixon. Maybe it’s counting on readers to be vague about Watergate too, or maybe it really is painting Nixon as a victim.
This all leads up to the petition, which is custom-printed with the recipient’s name and address. It calls for “investigations into all past and current government politicians, appointed officials and bureaucrats who are credibly implicated in the well-documented corruption and abuse of power to prevent President Donald Trump from being elected and re-elected President of the United States.” That casts a huge net but maintains deniability with the phrase “credibly implicated.” The only person specifically named is Comey, and there’s a new accusation here; he’s called “a key player in the effort to rig a presidential election and undermine a duly elected president.” Election rigging is a serious accusation, but there’s no other mention of it in the mailing.
Now we come to the mailing’s real purpose. A third of the petition page is a request for an “urgent contribution.” The checkboxes run from $35 to $10,000. The mailing is all about panicking the reader into sending Judicial Watch money. Perhaps the petition is no more significant than the “census” JW has used in the past; it may be just a way to scare recipients into making contributions. It’s also possible that Judicial Watch gets favors from Trump in exchange for supporting his attacks on political enemies.
It isn’t just Judicial Watch or pro-Trump groups that does these things, of course. You can see such things daily on social media from both the left and the right. Any time you get a message with vague claims and emotional language, you need to be careful. If it’s asking for money, be triply cautious.
Book discussion: A History of Repeated Injuries
The founders of the United States objected to certain practices by the British government and declared independence to be rid of them. They didn’t entirely succeed, though. The eight essays in the Cato Institute’s A History of Repeated Injuries show that many of them have come back in new forms, harming us and infringing on our rights. Thus, the title applies in two senses: first in the sense the Declaration used, but also that they have been “repeated” many times since the Revolution supposedly brought them to an end.
The first article, “The Purpose and Limits of Government” by Roger Pilon, is different from the others. It presents an overview of libertarian ideas rather than addressing a specific problem. It makes some good points but attempts too much in too short a space. Pilon addresses some of the more difficult issues facing libertarians and offers answers, but it takes a longer essay, if not a whole book, to properly cover some of the matters raised.
The other pieces each focus on a specific concern of America’s founders and show how the nation has fallen short in addressing it. “How Plea-Driven Mass Adjudication Undermines Americans’ Right to a Jury Trial,” by Clark Neily, compares the guarantees in the Bill of Rights to the present state of affairs. The Sixth Amendment says, “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury.” Today, most criminal cases don’t go to a jury trial. They’re resolved by plea bargaining, which in practice means you plead guilty to a lesser charge under the threat of having heavier charges brought against you. That leaves defendants, whether guilty or not, having to decide whether they should accept a shorter sentence or risk a much longer one if they demand a jury trial. The question becomes not one of guilt or innocence but of risk assessment.
“The Seventh Amendment Civil Jury Right and Agency Adjudication,” a short article by Thomas A. Berry, deals with another aspect of trial without a jury. Many legal penalties are levied by government agencies rather than courts. The administrative panels are tied to their parent agencies, so they’re prone to bias in their favor.
“A Revolt Against Discriminatory Taxation,” by Adam M. Michel and Joshua Loucks, is mostly about the history of taxation in the colonial period and the first few decades of the US government. It notes that the colonial complaints weren’t just about “taxation without representation” but also about unfair levying. For instance, the Boston Tea Party wasn’t just about the imposition of a tax by Parliament; the tax was set up to give a monopoly to the East India Company, which had an exclusive exemption. The article goes on to discuss early tax revolts, such as Shays’ Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion, and the motives behind them.
David Bier’s “The Founders’ Policy of Free Immigration,” deals with a topic that’s especially relevant today. The founders of the US positively encouraged immigration; one of the complaints in the Declaration was about “obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners.” The article covers the history of immigration law. Until the 1880s, there were no significant restrictions. The first limitations were on Chinese immigration, largely motivated by racial stereotypes held by white Californians (and non-Chinese immigrants competing for jobs). It was only in the 1920s that strong limits on immigration became the default under US law.
“The Withering of the Old Republic — The Decline of Anti-Militarism in American Politics,” by Brandan P. Buck, deals with the growing militarization of the US through its history. The Founders strongly distrusted standing armies and involvement in foreign wars, and the Constitution has a sunset requirement for all military appropriations. There was strong opposition to the US entry into World War I, but such opposition as there was to World War II involvement collapsed. Perhaps Hitler was a special case, but even after that the US fought many more foreign wars than before — without declaring war even once. Truman personally dragged the US into Korea’s civil war, forcing many Americans into it, and Vietnam followed. Congress has increasingly let presidents conduct military action in foreign countries with open-ended authorizations of military force.
Douglas A. Irwin’s “The Founders’ Trade Grievances — and Today’s” overlaps with the prior article on taxation, but with a focus on trade restrictions. The relevant objection in the Declaration is “for cutting off our trade with all parts of the world.” The US imposed tariffs aimed at revenue from an early time, and they were a subject of controversy among many economic factions. Only one paragraph deals with the current tariff controversy.
“A History of Government by Executive Order,” by Brent Skorup, looks at the expanding scope and questionable constitutionality of executive orders by the president. Lincoln made unprecedented use of them during the Civil War, but it was only with Theodore Roosevelt that their use in normal times began to expand seriously. The president has been given broad power to act in an emergency, but “emergencies” are often loosely defined and become permanent conditions. Among the most notorious is Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, which sent Japanese-Americans not accused of any crime to concentration camps.
These articles are interesting, informative, and often alarming. The main problem is that they’re brief for what they aim to cover. A reader can use the book as a starting point for learning about these issues. It shows that many of the abuses of power we face today didn’t start with Trump. They’ve grown over many years, often getting little attention. The perspectives we get here should be more widely known.