Adam Serwer

The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a lawsuit last July over the TSA’s use of body scanners, arguing that they violated the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure. Not surprisingly, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. In a decision released earlier today, they dismissed EPIC’s constitutional arguments against the body scanners, while […]

Yesterday Josh Gerstein reported the results of an internal review conducted on the conditions of alleged leaker Bradley Manning, whom critics said was being held at a brig at Quantico under austere, punitive conditions. Manning has since been moved to Ft. Leavenworth in Kansas. There are two key revelations in the report, the first is […]

The Department of Justice has appealed a federal court’s decision to lift a stay allowing the military to continue implementing its Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. The court lifted the stay in part based on the government’s own arguments for refusing to defend the Defense of Marriage Act. A couple of points. It’s really tempting […]

I found this argument from Walter Russell Mead about what happens after the Drug War ends pretty amusing: Any change in drug policy is likely to disappoint the Stoner Lobby; the decriminalization of drugs is almost certain to lead to tougher non-criminal sanctions against their use. Marijuana may well get a pass, but other drugs […]

Pema Levy writes about the impact of the KBR rape case in the context of the larger battle over mandatory arbitration: The Franken Amendment, KBR president William C. Bodie wrote in a letter in January 2010, “promotes frivolous lawsuits.” It’s the most common argument trotted out in favor of arbitration, and it’s exactly how KBR […]

Rep. Peter King‘s call for an investigation into Newscorp following revelations that media organizations owned by Rupert Murdoch allegedly tried to hack the phones of 9/11 victims is probably a smaller deal than it seems: King said in the letter, addressed to FBI Director Robert Mueller, that the journalists should face felony charges if the […]

Eric Martin makes an important point: As previously argued, the notion that our military intervention against a despotic regime (that we had never supported to begin with) would somehow convince the Arab street that we don’t back non-democratic regimes in the region when convenient, was a highly dubious contention. After all, even if we did […]

One of the more common refrains on the right in defense of restrictive immigration laws is that the federal government has “failed” to address the problem, so it only makes sense that the states are taking matters into their own hands. Ilya Shapiro, who defends the constitutionality of SB 1070 but argues that its bad […]

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell‘s culture war counterterrorism campaign against federal trials for suspected terrorists contrasts rather starkly with the junior Senator from Kentucky, Rand Paul: “I think in this instance, if you capture them here, I think the federal courts probably can take care of them much more swiftly than Guantanamo and actually give […]

Mike Riggs looks at C.J. Chivers‘ latest report from the front lines in Libya showing that the rebels have taken to “looting” and “reprisals” against Libyans loyal to dictator Moammar Ghadafi and writes: Chivers argues convincingly that Qaddafi’s forces are worse, what with bombing civilians and executing prisoners. Then he notes that the rebels have […]