Sep 11, 2025
In January 2024, my colleague crowbarred me into a conference call with Oliver Stanford, a potential client in New York who had been beaten up by a gang. The story, as relayed to me, was that Oliver was so traumatized by the incident that he wanted to leave the United States to live under a new identity.
I didn’t see this as a matter I could help with. Oliver was an attorney and if he needed a new name he could simply apply for one. Name changes are commonplace and surely an attorney would know this.
Oliver was afraid of gang reprisals. He didn’t feel safe and didn’t want even to identify the gang. Could be the Crips. The Bloods. Tren de Aragua. Even Da’esh. I didn’t want to participate in the call. He didn’t mention why the gang had attacked him.
Supposedly it had been a random attack. A random attack would not implicate the gang. Oliver’s attackers were not arrested. He did not know who they were. He was not asked to testify against them. There was no reason the gang would want to have anything to do with Oliver.
The 60-something Oliver claimed to be afraid for his life. There was no motive for the beating but he was sure the gang was “after him.” He wanted to move overseas with a new identity. He believed this was the only way he could be safe.
I told him that if he wanted to change his name, he could file for a name change by paying $500 or so, maybe less, to file a petition at the local county courthouse. Normally, only one hearing was required. There was no adverse party. I wondered why I should be telling this to an attorney.
The whole story seemed suspicious to me. Then Oliver asked where he should move. He only spoke English. So I said, Ireland, England, Australia, NZ. Canada. Maybe South Africa.
He didn’t think his assailants —he claimed to have been beaten up in Brooklyn–would leave him alone in these countries. Did I have an alternative? Medical care was yet another issue.
I recommended Malaysia. Former British colony, (mostly) English-speaking; good medical care that was delivered in English and practicing a mild flavor of Islam.
But Oliver wasn’t convinced.
Oliver also didn’t like the idea of a name change, even though I told him he could take a certified copy of the judgment to the Passport Office and they would give him a passport in the new name.
What he really wanted was a new identity. “Is that something you could arrange?” he asked. The fire alarm went off, clang clang clang. I felt like saying, “No, officer it is not.”
So that’s what this was all about. I wondered if he was a fugitive, running from the law. That would complicate the name change. More likely, he was an informant working on a Rule 35. Or a special agent, pretending to be a sixty-something New York attorney.
I told him he should get a legal name change and that would be sufficient. I further told him that I don’t run a private witness protection program. He quickly hung up.
I told my colleague–who was on the call—“you realize that call was recorded and he was trying to set us up?”
“Oh no,” my colleague said, “no way.”
“Way,” was my response. I never heard from Oliver again.
Sep 8, 2025
Marguerite Duras published her autobiographical novel The Lover in 1984. Though she was already an accomplished novelist and filmmaker, it is that book in which she spoke of her childhood in Vietnam that made her a global figure. Having grown up in Vietnam, Duras spoke Vietnamese. She left Vietnam in 1932 and never returned.
In France she obtained a law degree. She was active in the Resistance during the German occupation.
Imagine Duras entering a Vietnamese restaurant in the 1970’s and surprising the staff with a native accent, the five tones of the South. Did her Vietnamese inform her writing? What was it like to give up her other language? Why did she kill that part of her?
Sep 5, 2025
The US hasn’t invaded Venezuela but crowed about destroying a fast boat that may or may not have been carrying drugs, that may or may not have been affiliated with Tren de Aragua and now we’ll never know.
We do know that there were eleven people on board. The federal courts teach us that “a prudent drug smuggler does not tolerate the presence of innocent bystanders.” Which means they were all in on it, but wait: you only need one or two to drive the boat, why carry an additional nine people and so greatly reduce your product-carrying capacity?
Ben Kramer, Don Aranow, Sal Magluta and Willie Falcon might have turned away from fast boats in the 1980’s and 1990’s if the US military was brought in for interdiction by cannon. Back then, the US took the Posse Comitatus Act seriously, but no longer. Trump has his own reading of the statute as he often does when he comes across language that wasn’t necessary for someone who grew up in the real estate business in New York. Judicial precedent means little.
Couldn’t we have convinced the eleven to defend themselves, maybe fire on a US ship? That would have given the US justification for war. The problem is that the ships were too far away. No one ever got close enough to see what flag the purported drug fast boat was flying. The protocol was to ask the country of registry if they objected to the US boarding the vessel. And guess what? Drugs are not always found.
I can’t think of a single case where the US simply rained hellfire on a ship in the open seas on the mere suspicion that trafficking was afoot. Next: we’ll shoot down airplanes.
We’ve done it before. The captain of the USS Vincennes authorized a missile strike against approaching fighter planes which turned out to be a civilian Iranian airliner.
The DEA has an air wing. Maybe fighter planes should be added to their arsenal.
Except…the destruction of the Venezuelan fast boat had nothing to do with the drug war. The drug war ended long ago.
Sep 4, 2025
The idea of full-time adult education caught my attention some time ago. Inexpensive student housing, world-class athletic facilities, no lines at Student Health, lectures on almost every conceivable subject and wine and cheese parties: what’s not to like?
I did my research and was drawn to the idea of becoming a non-degree seeking “returning scholar” for $70 per semester at Southern Illinois University based on my onetime connection to the State and an accent that marks me distintively as a native. Blending in was going to be difficult enough as is without making things worse by speaking with an accent that marked me as a foreigner, or worse, someone from out of state. Moreover, as I had no interest in a degree, no student loans needed to be subscribed to finance the back to school project.
When I was in high school, SIU was viewed as a “party” school, second only to that august institution, the University of Colorado at Boulder. The fact that degree-seeking students balance life and work and perhaps don’t take academic pursuits that seriously was a vote in the school’s favor.
Other seniors have closely watched the “back to school” movement if not copying the concept outright. A senior female golfer was attracted by the low greens fees at another back-to-school university. Her dream, before life intervened, was to play on her school’s NCAA golf team. At the age of 60, she tried out and made the golf team and realized her dreams.
John McAffee became a drug-fueled, red-noticed Interpol international terrorist after his sixtrieth birthday. He didn’t go back to school but maybe he should have.
It’s never too late to reach for your dreams.
Next: why “Smoking for Seniors” is trending. Get all the benefits of tobacco with none of the risks: you will lose weight and have more energy. You won’t live long enough to develop tobacco-related disease. You can hang out with the cool kids on smoke breaks while puffing away and trying to dissuade them from the habit.
Sep 2, 2025
The UFO community is excited by reports of several anomalies attendant to what is probably an eccentric comet but which might be technological. The absence of iron in the chemical make up of its tail, its almost planned trajectory through our solar system and other un-comet-like behavior.
Trump hasn’t been seen for several days, helicopter Marine 1 flew from the White House to Walter Reed hospital, the National Guard is in the streets, vice-president JD. Vance is preparing to take office.
Despite promises, the Epstein files haven’t been released and the word is he documents are kept under lock and key to protect Trump, who may have had an unrelated stroke or cardiac event.
Th president of France, Emmanuel Macron, who married his grammar school teacher, has joined with her to sue an American reporter who claimed that Mrs. Macron was born a woman. The lawsuit to reclaim her honor ignores the example of Oscar Wilde, who proved that lawsuits to restore honor can backfire badly.And poor Oscar never had to deal with American-style legal “discovery,” a device designed to limit lawsuit excesses but which does anything but.
Israel will not desist from its war against Hamas and Russia will not desist from its war against Ukraine. George Harrison sang “the Ukraine girls really knock me out/they leave the west behind/Russian girls make me scream and shout/and Georgia is always on my mi-mi mind” bark when Russia an Ukraine formed part of the USSR. Could their war be fundamentally a civil war?
Aug 29, 2025
James Brooks
James Brooks was a carnie, a worker at a traveling carnival that moved from one Southern State to another. Carnivals often winter in Florida, which was fine with Brooks, who was on the run from some unpleasantness in New Jersey.
Brooks had a fake driver’s license, a steady job and a part-time hustle for the Drug Enforcement Administration. He was far from a top producer for the DEA, but regularly reported to his DEA special agent handler who was able to turn Brooks’ leads into arrests.
Feeling almost like a respected member of his carnival community and given Florida’s lack of public transportation, Brooks decided to buy a car. Unfortunately, he did not have enough money to purchase the car of his dreams. A person with his background and position would be expected to steal a car, but Brooks did no such thing: instead, he applied for a bank loan at SunTrust Bank. SunTrust was heavily advertising their auto loans and one of their advertisement caught Brooks’ attention. He went to a branch, told the bank officer all about the dream car and how excited he was too purchase this automobile.
The bank officer told Brooks that the interest rates were higher for used cars, but this should present no problem. He handed Brooks a loan application which Brooks began to fill out. “You need a steady job,” the officer said.
Brooks hesitated. The carnival wouldn’t gear up for th4 season until April or so, there would be no paychecks until then. Brooks thought for a moment and decided to put his side hustle front and center. Under the section for “Employment,” Brooks wrote, “DEA.”
“What do you do for them?” The officer asked.
“I really don’t want to discuss it,” Brooks replied.
The loan was funded, the car was still available and Brooks purchased the car, a 1982 Ford Escort. He received a payment book from the dealer and each month ripped a page out of the payment book, went to the post office and bought a money order, and mailed his payment in.
There wasn’t a lot of DEA work and Brooks’ special agent handler told him that he would have to produce, otherwise, his informant’s gig would be at an end. To get information, Brooks would have to befriend those who used and sold drugs. In the carnival scene, this was primarily meth. Brooks did his best and from time to time informed on people in the scene he came across.
In April, Brooks left Florida in his Ford Escort and followed the carnival from state to state. A routine traffic stop—aren’t they all?—quickly morphed into something else when the record of his driver’s license couldn’t be found. Despite the warrant, New Jersey didn’t want to come for Brooks who happened to be with the carnival in Ft. Lauderdale when the traffic stop was made.
The arresting officer was with Oakland Park police and was cross-designated with the DEA. The DEA didn’t require its agents to have a college degree and used local police departments as their minor leagues, a a recruitment pool of young officers who might be tempted to leave their local departments for better federal pay and benefits. The Oakland Park police officer had this in mind and referred the matter to the US Attorney.
A grand jury then indicted Brooks for bank fraud. Never mind that he had faithfully and regularly paid the loan. Never mind hat the loan was current. He had told two lies. Brooks lied about his name. This was understandable, given the warrant from New Jersey. The false name had no credit score and the bank had not relied on someone else’s credit when deciding to fund Brooks’ used car purchase. The second lie was that Brooks was employed by the DEA. Brooks regularly received money from the DEA, but in the days before the rise of the gig economy, you were either employed or you were not. A side hustle, no matter how regular, did not qualify as employment.
Brooks went to trial, confident in his belief that a jury of his peers would acquit him. After all, he was practically law enforcement and had helped put drug dealers in jail. The jury indictment was a cruel joke. Brooks tried to find his special agent DEA handler to ask for assistance, but the DEA rebuffed all his efforts.
Federal trials almost always result in convictions. The percentage of convictions is in the high 90th percentile. An acquittal is an aberration that almost never happens. The Palm Beach county federal jury did not take pity on Brooks because when the judge charged them with the law, they were to consider one and only one question: did Brooks lie to the bank? If the answer to that question was “yes,” they had to convict.
They were to ignore the fact that he was current on the loan. The jury was to consider a letter from the DEA, put into evidence by the prosecution, that stated a research of DEA records was conducted and “no evidence of an employee by the name of James Brooks could be found.” The jury followed the judge’s instructions.
When it came time for sentencing, the learned federal judge took into consideration all the factors he had told the jury to ignore. Brooks had paid the loan. He was arguably an adjunct law enforcement officer in that turkey drug world. The bank could not be said to have been defrauded except in some technical sense. The DEA had probably gotten into some kind of argument with Brooks and that is what had led to the indictment.
The judge sentenced Brooks to a little more than a year in jail. By doing so, he insured that Brooks would get the full 55 days of good time off his sentence. Brooks would be eligible for halfway house and work release after just four months, a just result.
Lisa Cook
Lisa Cook is one of the governors of the Federal Reserve. When she applied for a bank loan, she claimed that the money would be used to purchase an owner-occupied single family home, the safest kind of mortgage for the simple reason that everyone needs to sleep.
Cook lied to the bank. She already had an owner-occupied primary residence. This new property was an investment, a second home. But not the first.
Cook lied to the bank. Like it or not, this is a federal crime. It doesn’t matter if she is current on her loan. It doesn’t matter if she never intended to defraud the bank. All that matters is that she lied to the bank.
This is not a Donald Trump issue. It is not about Trump’s war on the bureaucracy. It is about one simple question:
Why should Brooks go to jail but Cook be given a pass?
Aug 26, 2025
I have been thinking a lot about “what if”’ scenarios. I also have been thinking about how precarious things are at the moment. The last time I felt this way was August, 2001. I had just started a new job in Riyadh. All my financial problems were over. I knew something was going to happen. I didn’t know what. I thought that maybe Saudi Arabia might reset or even break off diplomatic relations. Something was in the air, but no one expected 9/11.
There will be no peace in Gaza. Netanyahu is not a peacemaker. His father was a historian who hadn’t gotten over the treatment of Sephardis in Spain in 1492. Netanyahu lost a brother to the PLO in Uganda. October 7, comparatively was yesterday. There will be peace only after an unconditional surrender and he does not understand why the global community pressures him but doesn’t pressure Putin, who started a war.
There will be no peace in Ukraine, either. Zelensky sees the support of Europe and believes there is no reason to give in. Putin will wait. There will be minor shifts on the battlefield, but he gains nothing by making peace. He has already recognized that his initial objectives were not made. Territorial concessions were only half of what the war was about. If Trump pressures Ukraine, so much the better. Putin is in no rush.
There has been a lot talk about America’s vigorous president, who has his 80th birthday this year. Biology cannot be ignored. Trump has never had a healthy diet. Assuming he has the best physicians American has to offer, there is a long history of good doctors being afraid to treat their leader patients.
His doctors will be overly cautious, afraid that aggressive treatments will fail leaving the patient in a worse state than before. If Trump’s physical condition is as bad as some suspect, the country my find itself with a caretaker president.
Trump is incapacitated and Vance takes over. Or Vance hangs back because Trump’s inner circle keep him at arm’s length. It happened with Biden. China and Russia will feel out the new leader. Israel will hit Gaza harder than ever before.
Vance then serves out the rest of Trump’s term and wins a new term easily. But there’s a missing piece. I don’t know exactly what it is or what it will mean. All I know is that there is a missing piece.
Aug 26, 2025
I have been thinking a lot about “what if”’ scenarios. I also have been thinking about how precarious things are at the moment. The last time I felt this way was August, 2001. I had just started a new job in Riyadh. All my financial problems were over. I knew something was going to happen. I didn’t know what. I thought that maybe Saudi Arabia might reset or even break off diplomatic relations. Something was in the air, but no one expected 9/11.
There will be no peace in Gaza. Netanyahu is not a peacemaker. His father was a historian who hadn’t gotten over the treatment of Sephardis in Spain in 1492. Netanyahu lost a brother to the PLO in Uganda. October 7, comparatively was yesterday. There will be peace only after an unconditional surrender and he does not understand why the global community pressures him but doesn’t pressure Putin, who started a war.
There will be no peace in Ukraine, either. Zelensky sees the support of Europe and believes there is no reason to give in. Putin will wait. There will be minor shifts on the battlefield, but he gains nothing by making peace. He has already recognized that his initial objectives were not made. Territorial concessions were only half of what the war was about. If Trump pressures Ukraine, so much the better. Putin is in no rush.
There has been a lot talk about America’s vigorous president, who has his 80th birthday this year. Biology cannot be ignored. Trump has never had a healthy diet. Assuming he has the best physicians American has to offer, there is a long history of good doctors being afraid to treat their leader patients.
His doctors will be overly cautious, afraid that aggressive treatments will fail leaving the patient in a worse state than before. If Trump’s physical condition is as bad as some suspect, the country my find itself with a caretaker president.
Trump is incapacitated and Vance takes over. Or Vance hangs back because Trump’s inner circle keep him at arm’s length. It happened with Biden. China and Russia will feel out the new leader. Israel will hit Gaza harder than ever before.
Vance then serves out the rest of Trump’s term and wins a new term easily. But there’s a missing piece. I don’t know exactly what it is or what it will mean. All I know is that there is a missing piece.
Aug 25, 2025
Law school will not teach you how to survive an assassination attempt. That is a skill you will have to learn on your own.
Aug 24, 2025
In travel news, Trump wants to send Abrego Garcia to Uganda and federal troops to Chicago. Anna Delvey (Inventing Anna) remains in the US because the Nine Sages of the Supreme Court haven’t dealt with the appeal of her criminal case. With so much Trump-related litigation taking up the court’s attention on both its regular and “shadow” dockets, perhaps there is little time to devote to Anna’s case. It shouldn’t take long for the Nine Sages to issue their “cert.denied” order, but the rules for celebrity justice are different. Like it or not, Delvey is a celebrity, appearing in the pages of Vogue, Page Six and wherever else celebrities hang out these days.
Though not a matter (yet) for the Nine Sages, Delvey may be a candidate for African deportation. Delvey came to the US from Germany, where she was not a citizen, but a resident. Germany is unlikely to accept for residency an individual who has committed felonies in the United States. This leaves the Russian Federation, where Delvey was born and may be able to get a Russian passport. Whether Russia takes her back depends on whether the US is holding anyone Russia wants. Or whether Russia is holding anyone we want. Involving Russia in a prisoner swap is like three-dimensional chess: Russia will insist that an individual in another country be part of the exchange, while the US gripes that any exchange should only be a bilateral arrangement. While all this squabbling goes on, Delvey gets to stay in New York. I wonder if she even still speaks Russian–she left at a young age and grew up in Germany.
If the US deports Abrego Garcia to Uganda or its other favorite, South Sudan, it will only be a question of time before he shows up at the Southern border in search of a coyote to take him across. Don’t expect him to avoid legal entanglements by moving his family back to El Salvador. Abrego Garcia wrongly believes, as do all upon whom the attention spotlight falls, that the reason a US senator traveled to El Salvador was due to a genuine interest in Abego Garcia’s case and well-being. Nothing could be further from the truth. Interest in his case exists only because it’s an effective way to criticize Donald Trump. Once Trump is taken out of the equation, no one will care.
If Abrego Garcia can get to Dubai or Istanbul, he can get a flight to South America. Once in Colombia, he can join others crossing the Darien on foot and then it’s an arduous–arduous but doable–bus ride north to and through Mexico. Financial help will arrive from “supporters” who would love to see this Salvadoran thorn prick Trump’s side again. Stories of the trip through the jungle, being threatened by smugglers with a cameo by the colorful Kuna Indian tribe of Panama–for whom the names “Wilson” and “Woodrow” are commonplace–will enrage those who blame all these hardships on his nemesis, Donald Trump.
In the old days–that is before the FBI put a stop to senators selling immigration relief through expensive private bills, special legislation would go through Congress regularizing Abrego Garcia’s immigration situation. I wonder why so little is said about his American-citizen wife. It is understandable why she may not be keen on moving to Uganda and the idea of a Darien jungle trek doesn’t really sound like a fun vacation.
Meanwhile, Anna Delvey appears in a multi-page Vogue spread and you can almost ignore the black “electronic monitoring device” affixed to her ankle. It is just a question of time before these become a “must have” fashion item and the market is flooded with cheap–albeit, tariff-paid, non-functioning copies to complete the look.
Soon, everyone will have one.