Adam Serwer

I want to make another point about Haley Barbour and the Confederate flag, because I’m afraid my post yesterday responding to Jeffrey Goldberg may have given the impression that Barbour or white people in Mississippi are acting out of racist anger toward black people in their veneration of the Confederacy. If prejudice required anger to […]

Ben Wittes argues that the Faisal Shahzad case proves nothing either way: To say, as many liberals and the administration are now saying, that Shahzad proves that the criminal justice system works in high-stakes counterterrorism crises is very silly. It proves at most that the criminal justice system sometimes works in such cases, a point […]

Latoya Peterson on the Rick Sanchez flap. California House Democrats call for criminal investigations of mortgage lenders. Beastiality-loving, Islamophobic Tea Party candidate Carl Paladino is losing. I like this ad campaign not just because it promotes safe sex and helps mainstream images of gay people of color. But it also makes me think of that […]

A number of states have thought of good ways to reduce incarceration costs, like imprisoning fewer people and looking to alternatives to incarceration for those convicted of nonviolent crimes. Other states, like the 15 states with the country’s highest prison populations the Brennan Center looked at in its new report, have come up with some […]

Jeffrey Goldberg tries, and fails, to get a straight answer from Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour about Republican veneration of the Confederacy: Just imagine if this discussion was about the Holocaust. Do we really think the world would allow Germany to venerate the Nazis? Well, slavery was the Holocaust of the African-American experience, and yet, here […]

The Pew Hispanic Center issues a report that supports the trend seen in the Latino Decisions poll showing Latinos growing more Democratic, rather than the Gallup poll showing the opposite. Two-thirds (65%) of Latino registered voters say they plan to support the Democratic candidate in their local congressional district, while just 22% support the Republican […]

Following would-be Times Square Bomber Faisal Shahzad receiving a sentence of life imprisonment, Ben Smith asked Rep. Peter King, an opponent of using civilian trials to prosecute terror suspects, what he thought: “The case worked out well. I had questions about it. There was a bit of luck involved here,” he said. “He was advised […]

Jeff Stein reports on a revelation from an ongoing intellectual-property suit involving software the CIA is possibly using to aim its drones, which the developer says is flawed: The CIA has declined comment on allegations that its drones have a targeting margin of error of up to 40 feet, a malfunction that could be contributing […]

Human Rights First does a video interviewing New Yorkers near Foley Square about the trial of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a former Gitmo detainee who is charged in connection with the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. The video pokes fun at conservatives for suggesting a civilian trial of the alleged 9/11 plotters would […]

No, that’s not an exaggeration: In an interview Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” British radical Muslim activist Anjem Choudary made clear what he and his Islamist brothers have planned for the West. “We do believe, as Muslims, the East and the West will one day be governed by the Shariah,” he said. “Indeed, we believe […]