Adam Serwer

Justin Elliott interviews Bob Vander Plaats, the Iowa social conservative who authored the pledge that suggested black families were better off during slavery: There’s one section in the pledge that says the candidate has to reject — the phrase used is “Sharia Islam” — can you describe what you mean by that phrase and what […]

At National Review, Brian J. Pawlowski summarizes the current Republican consensus on counterterrorism: This irrational approach needs to be fixed. There are commonsense criteria that should apply to all individuals, American citizen or not: If you actively aid, or attempt to aid, any terrorist or terrorist group whose goal is to attack American or allied […]

I’m finally reading Rick Perlstein‘s Nixonland, and I laughed out loud when I read this passage about the vulnerability of Jerry Voorhis, the California Democrat who was the first victim of Richard Nixon‘s red-baiting: Voohris possessed an added vulnerability: He had once been a member of the Socialist Party. Not a Communist, but for the […]

Hard to disagree with the spirit of what Amanda Marcotte writes here on the squeamishness in referring to anti-abortion violence as terrorism: I’m trying to imagine what would happen if a Muslim terrorist killed a specific target, and a local Muslim group said, “While we don’t think he should have shot the target, we’re glad […]

We’ve got a new genre of “hypocrisy journalism,” courtesy of the Washington Post: A Washington Post journalist on the scene confirmed the first lady, who’s made a cause out of child nutrition, ordered a ShackBurger, fries, chocolate shake and a Diet Coke while the street and sidewalk in front of the usually-packed Shake Shack were […]

Rep. Allan West has invited sharia panic organization Citizens for National Security to the Hill for a policy briefing, during which a list of known Communists Mutants members of the Muslim Brotherhood will be produced: A highlight of the briefing will be an announcement by Dr. Leitner of CFNS’s development of an unprecedented list of […]

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has emerged as the GOP’s preeminent culture war counterterrorist, ascends to heretofore unreached levels of self-parody by arguing that the not guilty verdict for Casey Anthony proves that terrorists shouldn’t be tried in federal court: “These are not American citizens. We just found with the Caylee Anthony case how […]

Spencer Ackerman analyzes incoming Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta‘s assertion that we’re only twenty or so kills away from neutralizing al Qaeda: Panetta has to know he’s flirting with an epic fail. The U.S. doesn’t have a great track record at judging progress against al-Qaida by pointing to terror leaders taken off the board. Somehow […]

Jesse Washington has a new piece exploring the uneven impact of the recession on the black middle class, with some really startling information on just how profoundly black homeowners have been impacted, noting that, “In 2009, for every dollar of wealth the average white household had, black households only had two cents.” That’s in part […]

Following up on Marc Thiessen‘s bogus claim that the Obama administration’s policy with terrorism suspects is now “catch and release,” this is a chart I made of Gitmo detainees released or transferred based on the numbers from McClatchy: Now, I think we should release people when we have no basis for holding them. But remember, […]