Adam Serwer

It’s really astonishing that David Vitter is still a senator. Tim Geithner vs. Elizabeth Warren? Just read this. Ann Friedman explains that the way to make friends of other races is not to treat them as anthropology projects. Ben Smith destroys the NBPP story.

Yesterday I wrote that countering domestic radicalization will often involve people who are conservative or political in ways the government won’t necessarily like, because those people will have a kind of theological and cultural credibility more liberal Muslims won’t. Matt Duss, pivoting off a Washington Institute for Near East Policy report on the administration’s national-security […]

Jay Bybee on the torture memos he helped write: He said he was “proud of our opinions” at the Office of Legal Counsel, too, calling them “well researched” and “very carefully written.” Still, he said the controversy surrounding his tenure there had been difficult. “I have regrets because of the notoriety that this has brought […]

New York Gov. David Paterson has terrible approval ratings, he is mired in a domestic violence and cover-up scandal involving one of his aides, and he’s just generally considered a failure as a governor. But for civil libertarians concerned about criminal justice issues, he’s really come through. Today he will be signing a bill prohibiting […]

The decision to drop two defendants from the New Black Panther case and focus solely against the individual who held the baton has been presented as proof positive that the Obama administration is racist. Rush Limbaugh claims that Eric Holder and Barack Obama “continue to protect and represent” the New Black Panther Party and that […]

Jay Bybee, the former Bush-era head of the Office of Legal Counsel who helped craft the legal justifications for torture, admitted that some interrogators went beyond the guidelines laid out in the torture memos, reports Jason Leopold: Bybee, whose responses to questions appears to be an attempt to absolve himself of culpability, told House Judiciary […]

So today Politico published a piece about how the White House is really disdainful of liberal bloggers for not celebrating the administration’s successes or being understanding enough about the political circumstances that led to their losses. The piece quotes exactly one “top Obama adviser” anonymously who supports this claim. Ironically, most of the advisers quoted […]

Yesterday I attended an event on domestic radicalization at the Center for American Progress which was co-hosted by the National Security Network that featured administration officials, a leader from a Muslim organization, a former NYPD commissioner and LAPD chief, and an academic who has studied domestic radicalization. It was the first such event I’d attended […]

Juan Williams calmly rebuts Megyn Kelly‘s insistence that the New Black Panther Case reflects a policy of not pursuing cases with white victims and black defendants, even pointing out that the likely motivation for this entire scandal is payback for the politicized hiring and enforcement scandal at the DoJ under Bush. I think what’s most […]

Race is a really bad way to identify candidates who will look out for your interests. Tea Partiers find a way to justify the NAACP’s resolution condemning them for racism. Conservatives accidentally make the case for stimulus. The top 10 countries with the highest incarceration rates. Guess who’s on top?