Adam Serwer

In a just world, Imam Warith Dean Mohammed, not Louis Farrakhan, would have been the face of African American Islam. The son of Nation of Islam founder Elijah Mohammed, W.D. Mohammed was America’s most influential black Muslim leader before he died yesterday at the age of 74. He broke with his father’s prejudiced beliefs (he […]

Adam Nagourney is the latest reporter to out himself as a super-powered mutant, joining a long line of powerful telepaths like Professor Charles Xavier and Jean Grey. “John McCain says he’s about change, too – except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics,” Mr. Obama said. […]

Dana is exactly right that the state garnishing wages for child support and withholding that money is bad public policy, but we should stop mincing words about what is actually happening. The state is taxing child support. What’s worse is that witholding that money interferes with families going off public assistance, keeping them dependent on […]

It’s one thing to hope that you’re doing G-d’s work, it’s another entirely to argue that the will of G-d is definable along the lines of petty human partisanship in order to garner support for your disastrous policies. G-d’s will is opaque, and so as President Abraham Lincoln said, our concern should not be whether […]

Right wing patriotism is something like that sleazy guy in high school trying to get his girlfriend to have sex with him–“if you really loved me baby, you’d do this.” So it goes on the right: real “patriots” support torture, illegal search and seizure, and any number of unconstitutional policies. If you really loved your […]

The contempt expressed by Republicans for Obama‘s past as a community organizer would be amusing if it weren’t so sincere. Contempt for community organizing (a phenomenon on both sides of the political spectrum) is essentially contempt for democracy. How exactly are citizens supposed to look out for their interests if not by organizing to pursue […]

Sarah Palin continues to lie about her opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere: Palin refuses to yield on her claim that she opposed the infamous Bridge to Nowhere earmark, despite charges by the Obama campaign that her assertion is a “lie.” “I told Congress thanks but no thanks for that Bridge to Nowhere,” Palin said […]

John McCain‘s latest attack on Obama shows he is either extremely ignorant of military policy or he’s counting on both voters and reporters to be ignorant of military policy. Yesterday, McCain began by distorting one of Obama’s statements by omitting the relevant context: “Of course, now he wants to increase it,” McCain told an audience […]

Jeffrey Goldberg, national correspondent for The Atlantic, plays himself in an op-ed for The New York Times discussing Obama‘s language on Pakistan: his convention speech, he said, “McCain likes to say that he’ll follow bin Laden to the gates of Hell — but he won’t even go to the cave where he lives.” I’m still […]

When it comes out of the mouth of Sarah Palin, whom the media is trying to destroy by ignoring her unfamiliarity with how mortage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac work. HuffPo: Speaking before voters in Colorado Springs, the Republican vice presidential nominee claimed that lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had “gotten too […]