Adam Serwer

I had my doubts about the column format doing Ta-Nehisi Coates‘ writing justice, but he knocks it out of the park today with his first New York Times column on the historical amnesia of the latest X-Men film: But as “First Class” roars to its final climatic scene, it appeals to an insidious suspension of […]

Do athletes need to stand up? Black unemployment and government jobs. Julian Sanchez on Weinergate. Tactician, plan thyself.

Newt Gingrich, like former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, has a history of tolerance when it comes to Muslims he may have to disavow, reports Justin Elliott: As speaker of the House in the 1990s, for example, Gingrich played a key role in setting aside space on Capitol Hill for Muslim congressional staffers to pray each […]

In the aftermath of Obama‘s Israel speech, in which Republicans, joined by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, sought to portray the president’s remarks on negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians being based on the 1967 borders, Republicans revived the meme that Jews would be abandoning Obama. Haim Saban, a wealthy Israeli American who gives money to […]

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about what I thought were the ridiculous comparisons between male circumcision as practiced by Jews and Muslims in the U.S. and genital mutilation as practiced elsewhere. While I didn’t say this at the time, at least one of the major backers of San Francisco’s proposed ban on circumcision […]

On Monday, the Washington Post published an editorial critical of the prosecution of NSA whistle-blower Thomas Drake under the Espionage Act: Mr. Drake’s prosecution smacks of overkill and could scare others with legitimate concerns about government programs from coming forward. For example, the Justice Department charged Mr. Drake under a section of the Espionage Act […]

Glenn Loury and John McWhorter do a fascinating bloggingheads on Cornel West‘s criticism of Barack Obama: There are two key points that each of them make here that I don’t think are contradictory but are worth noting. First there’s Loury: The outsiderness of the African-American, the kind of, nose against the candy store window not […]

Months ago, Tennessee Republicans proposed some of the most radical “anti-Sharia” legislation in the country, a bill that would have allowed them to label observant Muslims terrorists because they adhered to Muslim religious requirements. Conservatives had recently tried to block the construction of a mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, by filing a suit in court, arguing […]

Obama’s radical nominee for commerce secretary. The “daughter test” thing is dumb. Classy. It’s a like a million childhoods cried out and were suddenly silenced.

Over vacation I started watching Battlestar Galactica, which is one of those shows that I’ve been meaning to watch for a while but just hadn’t gotten around to it. It struck me as a fairly obvious parable of the “war on terrorism,” and just for kicks I went back and read Jonah Golberg‘s essay on […]