Adam Serwer

In a letter to Republican Congressman Frank Wolf dated Oct. 15, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich justified the Justice Department’s decision to prevent former Voting Section Chief Christopher Coates from testifying before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission in relation to the New Black Panther Party voter-intimidation case. Weich assured Wolf that the Department would “not […]

Loving your boo. PBS is really white. DADT is dead, for now. Bill O’Reilly is scared of Muslims on airplanes.

The issue really isn’t that Christine O’Donnell has a conservative interpretation of the establishment clause; it’s that she didn’t seem to be aware of its existence. At the same time you have to imagine that liberals relish pointing this stuff out because they wish every race in the country looked like the Senate race in […]

For some reason, a blogger named Derrick Mathis listed black LGBT-rights blogger Pam Spaulding as an example of “white privilege” in the LGBT activist community. That was strange enough, but this part of the argument is odd too: The anti-Obama machine in Gay Inkdom is alive and strong. It’s purposefully misleading, resentful and born out […]

Sam Stein reports on an e-mail sent by conservative activist and former Voting Section Attorney turned NBPP “whistle-blower” J. Christian Adams on his efforts to put the case together in 2008. The Obama administration narrowed the case because they said there wasn’t enough evidence to prove a nationwide voter-suppression campaign, while Adams has argued the […]

Ben Wittes has a modest proposal for resolving the conflict over whether to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed and the alleged 9/11 conspirators in civilian court or military commissions. He suggests doing both: Call it the John Allen Muhammad model. The old D.C. area sniper case is strangely instructive here. Recall that when the snipers were […]

This via Mistermix seems to confirm a prior thesis about New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino: The showdown had its bizarre moments — like when Paladino bolted from the stage in the middle of the candidates’ closing arguments to go to the bathroom. “When you gotta go, you gotta go,” his campaign manager, Michael Caputo, […]

The way that veterans of the voting-rights section have always expressed their objections to me about the famous Bush-era Noxubee, Mississippi, case filed against a black plaintiff on behalf of white voters has always been in the context of arguing that the Bush-era voting section ignored similar complaints involving minorities. Conservative former employees of the […]

Sexual assault rampant in immigrant detention centers. But at least one Republican thinks we should just shoot them. Obama finds support from the right. The Iraqi “Awakening” seems to be over.

I actually didn’t pick up on the religious implications of this Jack Conway ad attacking Rand Paul before Jonathan Chait wrote a post about it, but I’m sort of surprised to see liberals latch on to it as particularly reprehensible in comparison to the other ads this cycle. What originally bothered me about the ad […]