The Conscience of Abe’s Turn

WEBWIRE – Monday, October 06, 2008

Washington, DC – New FBI guidelines governing investigations were released today after being signed by Attorney General Michael Mukasey. The American Civil Liberties Union quickly blasted the Department of Justice and FBI for ignoring calls for more stringent protections of Americans’ rights. The guidelines replace existing bureau guidelines for five types of investigations: general criminal, national security, foreign intelligence, civil disorders and demonstrations. The ACLU has been vocal in its disapproval of the overly broad guidelines, citing both the FBI’s and DOJ’s documented records of internal abuse.  read more »

I'm compiling a list of libertarian fiction released to print in 2008. You can contribute suggestions by commenting below.

In order to qualify for the list, the story must address libertarian themes (preferably from a libertarian perspective), and the book must have been released in 2008.

Here's the list so far (in order of release):  read more »

An ironically sad outcome, as Manuel Lora explains in this post on the LRC blog.

I’ve been looking for a way to work this into a blog post, and now Mike Tenant has given me an opportunity to do so.

On LewRockwell.com, Mike talks about obeying men rather than God. As a Christian—and as you know, Clydene and Ted are also Christians—I see a form of idolatry taking root in America, even in our churches.  read more »

The first comments are in on the first book of The Conscience of Abe’s Turn, and largely positive. “Can’t put it down.” “Want to find out how things turn out.” And so forth.

Of course, these were all from friends and family, whom I expect to be as honest as they can without hurting my feelings. But at least they are reading it, which says something about how engaging it is. Expecting other comments soon from those not related to me.

-TimK

This videographer, a native of Poland during Communism, where they didn’t have “free speech” like we do, documents an anti-police-state protest and the police misbehavior that successfully quashed it. And again, The Conscience of Abe’s Turn mirrors reality. (Or is it the other way around?) Watching this video, all I could think was, That’s something the Abe’s Turn police would do. That’s something Baedes actually did! (Not exactly, but yeah, just about. Achieved the same result anyhow. It’s in episode 2.)

The documentarian sums up the following short video: “I realized that in America, you can also be wrongfully arrested and beaten, or even killed, in violation of your civil rights… This kind of incidents are signs of the death of your freedom. And when American freedom dies, what do you think will happen with the rest of the world?” Here’s the video:  read more »

Today, I shipped out 4 copies of The Conscience of Abe’s Turn. And I’m thankful that shipments have started small, because that gives me time to work the last few kinks out of the ordering and fulfillment process. Meanwhile, my wife is sitting across the room from me enjoying her copy of the book.

Today, I got a piece of direct mail from Perry Marshall (whom you may recognize from my acknowledgments in the book’s preface) regarding Bill Bailey, inmate #60733-066, who is speaking at Perry’s upcoming seminar.

Who is Bill Bailey? He spent time in federal prison for computerized snooping that’s way less offensive than what Clydene is engaged in. Now, Clyde is a computer geek. She read about the BBS raids of the 1990’s. She read all about Randall Schwartz, and knew enough about the technology to take sides. She knows way more about the computer crime laws than (I’m sure) the politicians who voted for them. If you ever doubted that she would be terrified of being caught, just read Bill Bailey’s story.

(While Bill ended up in a relatively good prison, what terrifies Clyde is the fact of prison at all. Baedes would take great joy in that. The thing is, there’s no guarantee that Clyde would end up in as “good” a situation as Bill Bailey had.)

In a post on his blog the past June he wrote about a Heritage Foundation seminar that was entitled “Go Directly to (Federal) Prison: The Criminalization of Almost Everything”:  read more »

I have a big box of books to get rid of, so I have a great introductory offer for The Conscience of Abe’s Turn at the official J. Timothy King Web Shop.

(Compare Amazon’s offer and BarnesAndNoble.com.)

Expect the book to show up on Amazon soon, but stay tuned here for special offers.

UPDATE: Barnes & Noble have already slurped Abe’s Turn into their database, probably from Bowker. They have no availability or details yet, but they should get that info over the next weeks as it percolates through various industry databases.

-TimK

A friend of mine pointed me to this article at the Huffington Post.

Briefly, it quotes from a Washington Post article that refers to a study demonstrating that conservatives, if you present them with hard evidence against the Iraq war, they’ll just dig in their heels and become more opinionated.

Yeah, but there’s very little actually new here.  read more »