by Peter McWilliams

About the author: Peter McWilliams is the author of numerous books, including Ain’t Nobody’s Business if You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country.

On December 17, 1997, I was working in my living room-office on my computer next to a fire—sort of high-tech meets Abe Lincoln. It was not yet dawn, and I had been working most of the night. Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat” begins, “It’s four in the morning, the end of December.” It’s a special time of night and a special time of year. The rest of the world has gone quite mad with Christmas, and I am left alone to get some work done.

A hard pounding on the...