Adam Serwer

Ben Wittes writes that the detention provisions in the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act could have the impact of hampering terrorism investigations with their requirement that all Muslim terrorism suspects be forced into military custody: So let’s consider two very plausible counterterrorism scenarios and how they would interact with this bill, were […]

Malik Zulu Shabazz, one of the defendants in the trumped up New Black Panther voter intimidation case, has recently apologized to President Barack Obama for saying this: He said: “He represents the CIA, set-up, sabotage, lie on an African leader and bomb [sic] that man like he’s George Bush … And his wife should leave […]

Andrew Sullivan flags some eye-popping responses from religious conservatives regarding New York’s decision to pass marriage equality legislation. Here’s Kathryn Jean-Lopez: Are the fears of our founding fathers mere fantasy, or is care for legal protection against the tyranny of the majority an actual real-world concern? Is the vote of a democratically elected body necessarily […]

California’s effort to prevent the sale of violent video games to minors produced some of the most amusing oral arguments at the Supreme Court we’ve ever seen, with Justice Samuel Alito poking fun at the originalism of Justice Antonin Scalia by saying, “I think what Justice Scalia wants to know is what James Madison thought […]

Suzy Khimm checks in on the latest immigration nontroversy, the supposed “stealth DREAM Act” instituted by the Obama administration in the form of an ICE memo reminding the agency that their priority is the removal of undocumented immigrants with criminal records. Certainly, immigration hawks and restrictionists have grasped upon the ICE memo as evidence that […]

Earlier today, Congress voted on two Libya resolutions: One to authorize military intervention, the other to restrict the U.S. to support operations. Both failed. Neither Congress, nor the president has covered themselves in glory on this issue. Obama disregarded the views of the Office of Legal Counsel and several of his top lawyers in concluding […]

It should go without saying that anti-Muslim Dutch Member of Parliament Geert Wilders‘ acquittal on charges of hate speech don’t vindicate the content of his remarks. While Wilders view on Islam are abhorrent, the laws under which he was being prosecuted are a far bigger travesty. As Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, “the fitting remedy for […]

The outlines of a Senate “compromise” on detention have emerged, and it looks like Democrats have agreed to allow military detention in a domestic context with Muslims suspected of terrorism: Another provision would mandate military detention for people suspected of being “high value” terrorists from Al Qaeda: members of the organization who participated in planning […]

Yesterday Glenn Greenwald wrote: In his column for the American Enterprise Institute today, John Yoo accuses President Obama of transgressing the proper limits of executive power by asserting the right to wage war in Libya without Congress. That’s not really what Yoo was saying. Yoo said that the president was flouting his own understanding of […]

My apologies everyone, I should have written this sooner but blogging is going to be a bit slow today and tomorrow because I’m out reporting on a story that has a short lead time. Things should be back to normal next week.