Adam Serwer

Samita Mukhopadhyay on Nikki Haley‘s win and the Republican Party: “Model minority,” is a strategic move on behalf of conservatives to play Asians against blacks and unfortunately it has been really effective and has lead to not only inter-community conflict, but also the perpetuation of the idea that South Asians in leadership positions in the […]

Elena Kagan‘s record has offered slim pickings–both in terms of offering arguments against her nomination and being able to properly evaluate her judicial philosophy. So the news that Kagan was on the centrist side of the centrist-liberal battles within the Clinton administration is likely to increase liberal anxiety about her nomination, particularly on matters of […]

Bill Kristol and Jamie Fly on bombing Iran: Yet if we carried out a targeted campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities, against sites used to train and equip militants killing American soldiers, and against certain targeted terror-supporting and nuclear-enabling regime elements, the effects are just as likely to be limited. Kristol on Iraq, 2002: And, as […]

From Oliver Willis Walid Zafar comes this from Rep. Steve King of Iowa: King: When you look at this administration, I’m offended by Eric Holder and the President also, their posture. It looks like Eric Holder said that white people in America are cowards when it comes to race. And I don’t know what the […]

Robert Spencer, the professional anti-Muslim activist who has been working to oppose the construction of an Islamic center near Ground Zero and a Mosque in Staten Island, takes issue with several of the claims I made in my post last week. I’ll just start with the easiest claim Spencer disputes, that his colleague Pamela Geller […]

Today the Supreme Court declined to review the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was a victim of the Bush administration’s extraordinary rendition program. Arar, who was innocent, was rendered by American authorities to Syria where he was subjected to torture. The Supreme Court’s decision not to review the case lets stand a […]

There’s not much to say that I haven’t already said about proposals like Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce‘s attempt to deny citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants, but his statement here is inadvertently revealing: “This is an orchestrated effort by them to come here and have children to gain access to the great welfare […]

The arguments in favor of Arizona’s draconian immigration law have already been debunked. Arizona isn’t being overwhelmed by the undocumented because the undocumented population is decreasing. Crime in the U.S. is down, crime in Arizona is down “dramatically.” There is no spillover violence from the border — in fact the top four big cities with […]

Dahlia Lithwick has a great column on David Souter‘s epic takedown of originalism as a judicial philosophy: Souter took pains to reject the idea that the plain meaning of the Constitution is always clear, lurking there “in the Constitution, waiting for a judge to read it fairly.” We can all agree that much of the […]