Adam Serwer

The NPR guide to blogging. Muslims wearing things. Wikileaks Iraq docs: “[T]he regime has been forced to change its political constitution but allowed to retain its use of torture.” Allowed by the U.S. government, that is. John Yoo wants to waterboard the 17th Amendment. Originalism! Can “grit” be taught in school?

From Laura Rosen: A Kansas City African-American family, who had converted to Judaism and moved to Israel, has reportedly been beaten up in their apartment in Ashkelon in connection with a raid by a controversial Oz immigration police unit of the Israeli Ministry of Interior. Israel’s “Oz Unit” was formed recently in order to help […]

Dave Weigel has the right takeaway from Suzy Khimm‘s reporting on so-called election protection efforts from conservative groups, which advise their members to skirt the law by videotaping polling stations: Let’s say that no actual election fraud is captured, and no voters are scared away by aggressive Tea Partiers. The benefit of this sort of […]

As I wrote at Greg‘s place earlier, Thinkprogress omitted some relevant context from Juan Williams‘ remarks, but they were hardly, as William Saletan characterized, meant as a repudiation of those feelings, since he told George Stephanopolous that he should have gone on to repudiate them and didn’t. Again, it’s hard to have an honest conversation […]

Igor Volsky writes that the military’s survey on how receptive service members will be to repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” will show “mixed support” for ending the ban on gays and lesbians openly serving. He cites an appearance by Mark Thompson on The NewsHour in which he states, “The sense I’m getting, talking to insiders, […]

David Kurtz on the influence of the Republican National Lawyer’s Association, which has been holding training sessions in advance of the midterms: You can’t understand what’s happening in this election cycle without understanding that we’re a decade or more into a long-term Republican strategy to plant the seed that voting by minority groups is rife […]

It really is remarkable that Dan Savage has managed to draw the attention and participation of the president in his “It Gets Better” anti-homophobic-bullying project: As Steve Benen writes, “If even just one young person who’s feeling isolated and who’s struggling right now sees President Obama‘s video and feels a little more hopeful about his […]

Republicans attack the administration over immigration enforcement. Dahlia Lithwick takes a shot at explaining Virginia Thomas‘ call to Anita Hill. Sounds like Juan Williams is gonna make out fine. But his firing didn’t violate the First Amendment.

Last weekend, Washington Post Ombudsman Andrew Alexander‘s column excoriating the reporting side of the newspaper because the suburbs, where a lot of Post subscribers live, don’t get covered as much as they should. I found this odd because D.C. has also seen a series of shootings in the Petworth section of Washington, D.C., that are […]

Democratic Senate candidate Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania has been under attack from the Republican Jewish Coalition for his support for trying Khalid Sheik Mohammed in civilian court, even offering up Western Pennsylvania as a potential site. Ben Smith posts this ad from Human Rights First, which it is airing as a response. The ad features […]