Adam Serwer

Over at Greg’s place today, I wrote about Rep. Andy Harris, the recently elected Obamacare critic who really wants his government-subsidized health-care coverage. In my view, Harris accurately represents many Americans’ contradictory political inclinations, but there’s something else worth noting. Harris complained that he’d be without health-care coverage for nearly a month, but according to […]

I think the argument over whether or not the government has the authority to kill Anwar al-Awlaki is actually far more complex than the argument over whether torture is legal or justified, so it doesn’t surprise me that Andrew Sullivan comes down on this to the right of where you might actually expect him to, […]

Aside from the cancer that is Merle Dixon and all plot points flowing from his existence, the third episode of The Walking Dead was bearable, giving us a brief glimpse of the ruthless gender dynamics of the post-Zombiepocalypse world. The problem is that, as always, complex issues in the comic become mere plot devices. In […]

Conservatives are about to rediscover the trial of alleged embassy bomber Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani: Reporting from Los Angeles and New York — The first civilian trial of a Guantanamo Bay terrorism suspect appeared deadlocked Monday when a juror asked to be dismissed because she felt “attacked” for being a lone holdout in reaching a verdict. […]

Spencer Ackerman: For the Obama administration, AUMF has operated like an Emergency Law, providing blanket authorities for things like drone strikes beyond Afghanistan that are never mentioned in the brief 2001 language. A new AUMF would at least be more specific about what powers Congress actually intends the president to have to conduct a war […]

Yesterday Rep. Buck McKeon, the likely incoming chair of the House Armed Services Committee, gave a speech outlining his priorities in the new Congress. Among them is a new Authorization to Use Military Force: Detainee Policy—We will also focus on detainee policy. The days of U.S. courts making policy through case law must come to […]

John Yoo, the Berkeley professor who, as a member of the Bush-era Office of Legal Counsel authorized the use of torture, is a lot of things. Among the phrases we might use to describe him is, “not very smart.” Here he is engaging in a bit of standard-issue conservative identity politics (via Jonathan Chait): Voters […]

You could read Kevin Drum, Matt Yglesias, or Ezra Klein‘s wonky debunkings of the “uncertainty” explanation for the poor economy. Or you could just listen to the infinite wisdom of Todd Palin: When she’s stocking up on rhetorical ammo prior to a segment Fox’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” Palin asks her husband whether uncertainty over taxes […]

Five moronic ways to save the Obama presidency. McConnell caves on earmarks. David Frum(!) defends the welfare state. Latino Republicans unhappy with likely committee chairs who will oversee immigration-related matters.

I’ve written before that “one way to think about the cost of incarceration is that every person who is in jail or prison is someone who is not just out of the labor force but an active ward of the state.” The Center for Economic and Policy Research has done a study on the effect […]