In 1798, president John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts, a set of laws that restricted immigration and free speech. At the time, our infant nation was on the verge of war with France, and Adams was looking for a handy way to remove anyone he thought might be working with the enemy. But critics, including his vice president and future successor, Thomas Jefferson, accused Adams of using his power to silence dissent and infringe on Americans' First Amendment rights. So Adams did what any thin-skinned wannabe autocrat would do and jailed one of his leading critics, Benjamin Franklin's grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache, the editor of the Philadelphia Aurora. He also ordered the arrest of a congressman from Vermont, Matthew Lyon of Fair Haven, who published a newspaper, The Scourge of Aristocracy and Repository of Important Political Truth, that was critical of Adams. Lyons printed it on a press purchased from Franklin, using typeset letters made from melted-down bullets left from the Revolutionary War. Federal marshals arrested Lyon in October 1798, marching him 40 miles north from Fair Haven to Vergennes, where he would sit in a cold jail cell while he ran for reelection — and won, handily. If the idea of a sitting congressman being jailed for criticizing the president seems preposterous, Richmond singer-songwriter John Daly says, well ... watch out. "The Alien and Sedition laws that Adams signed, those are the same laws that Trump is going to use after being inaugurated to start kicking people out of the country," Daly said, referring to incoming president Donald Trump. "History is seriously repeating itself." (Three of the four Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 were soon repealed or allowed to lapse. Only the Alien Enemies Act remains on the books. It allows a president to deport noncitizens in some circumstances.) In 2017, shortly after Trump began his first term, the musician and piano tuner penned a musical called Spit'n Lyon: An Unsung Soldier's Song. Written with longtime friend and collaborator Greg Goldman and aided by Hinesburg-based teacher Niel Maurer, Spit'n Lyon is a 30-song opus telling the story of Lyon's life, from his youth as an Irish revolutionary to his arrival in America as an indentured servant to his service in the Revolutionary War as one of the Green Mountain Boys to his battle with Adams and censorship. Daly released the album and performed some…