In the latest sordid chapter of the manufactured New Black Panther Party “scandal,” Commissioner Todd Gaziano is circulating two draft letters among commissioners addressed to Attorney General Eric Holder. Ryan J Reilly has them both: One comes right up to the line of accusing Civil Rights Division head Thomas Perez of perjury based on the […]
Adam Serwer
Adam Serwer is a writing fellow at The American Prospect and a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He also blogs at Jack and Jill Politics and has written for The Village Voice, The Washington Post, The Root, and the Daily News. Follow @adamserwer
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It’s Torture, Not The Law, Ctd.
Dafna Linzer does some fantastic reporting on how the government’s case against Noor Uthman Mohammed Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman, is premised on the testimony of two witnesses, Sharqawi Abdul Ali al Hajj, and Sanad Yislam al Kazimi, who were tortured: Kazimi was captured in the United Arab Emirates in January 2003. He spent time in […]
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The Internal Workings Of Our Kenyan Anti-Colonialist Regime.
It may feel like the 1990s, what with a potential imminent GOP takeover of Congress and Dinesh D’Souza pushing pseudo-intellectual racism in newspaper op-ed pages, but the internal administration e-mails detailing the firing of smeared USDA official Shirley Sherrod prove it’s still 2010: The e-mails, some of which were redacted by the Agriculture Department, do […]
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“Illegal” vs. “Illegal Immigrant.”
So yesterday I got into an argument on Twitter with Mary Moreno of the Center for Community Change about my use of the term “illegal immigrant” to refer to people who reside in the United States illegally. She noted a push by Colorlines magazine to stop using the word “illegal” to refer to the undocumented. […]
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Paladino Meltdown Watch.
Faced with a political race that didn’t involve proving he hated Muslims more than the other candidate, Republican gubernatorial nominee Carl Paladino‘s candidacy has struggled to gain ground on Democrat Andrew Cuomo. An initial Quinnipiac poll showed Paladino within striking distance, but the Cuomo campaign has since hit Paladino aggressively, pushing up his negatives and […]
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How Much Did All Those Deportations Cost?
Elise Foley flags a study from CAP to put yesterday’s big deportation numbers in perspective: Apprehension: $18,310 Detention: $3,355 Legal processing: $817 Transportation: $1,000 In total, that’s $23,480 for each of the 392,000 people the U.S. removed last year, or $9,204,944,000. And as long as the number of undocumented immigrants in the country remains steady […]
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From Katrina To BP.
Adren Wilson, Executive Director of Equity and Inclusion Campaign, writes about how the BP oil spill has compounded the housing crisis Alabama residents faced following the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), 3,177 housing units in Mobile County sustained major or severe damage from Hurricane Katrina. According to available […]
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The Road To The Imperial Executive.
My column today is on the way conservative hyperbole about the Democrats’ fairly moderate domestic accomplishments — from health insurance reform that preserves the private system to regulating the financial industry after its practices helped usher in an economic crisis — obscures actual threats to liberty relates, I think, to the larger conversation folks like […]
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Torture And Ghailani.
From the government’s perspective, Judge Lewis Kaplan‘s ruling that a key witness in the trial of former Gitmo detainee and alleged Tanzanian embassy bomber Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, Hussein Abebe, wasn’t allowed to testify because his identity was initially extracted through torture is something of a setback. For the right, it’s a disaster — proof that […]
