Adam Serwer

I think it’s good that the Times is hitting Obama on raising millions from businesses with political interests while his campaign touts the small contributions that nevertheless make most up half of the money. It’s important for reporters to carefully scrutinize how politicians raise money, and from whom. But the story seems a little weak, […]

Via Ben Smith, after days of the RNC snorting chocolate milk out of their noses with laughter, McCain reverses himself on tire gauges. “Obama said a couple of days ago says we all should inflate our tires. I don’t disagree with that. The American Automobile Association strongly recommends it…” This isn’t a real flip-flop though. […]

President Bush sticks his fingers in his ears and pretends not to hear Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki say he liked Obama‘s plan for withdrawal from Iraq: “I talk to him all the time, and that’s not what I heard,” Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post aboard Air Force One on the start […]

I think the most striking thing about this video, showing McCain in a stunned silence as he attempts to answer two questions (How did Obama play the race card? And what has McCain done for black folks?) isn’t his inability to respond, but rather the fact that campaign manager Rick Davis made this statement in […]

Tim questions whether I can really discern the true motives behind Obama‘s support for an escalation of troop levels in Afghanistan. The short answer is no, I’m not a mind reader. But I disagree with Tim’s point that an Obama reversal on the subject “wouldn’t be a hard sell”. Voters may be ambivalent on Afghanistan, […]

Via Kevin Drum, Rory Stewart and Robert Kaplan join Zbigniew Brzezinski in warning against a surge in Afghanistan. Stewart cautions that the Afghan government’s problems of infrastructure are better solved by focusing on development and limiting our military objectives. Kaplan argues for a diplomatic effort to calm tensions between Pakistan and India and end decades […]

Some of you who read Amy Chozick‘s article in the Wall Street Journal, musing whether Obama may be “too skinny” to be president, may have mistakenly thought you were reading The Onion. In her piece, Chozick quotes a “Clinton Supporter” on a message board who says, “I won’t vote for any beanpole guy.” The good […]

This post has been edited for clarity. Mother Jones has a new project called “SLAMMED: The Coming Prison Meldown,” that deals with our ever-expanding prison system. Justine Sharrock writes about how, in Kansas, previously skeptical corrections professionals were pleasantly surprised about how effective transitional services could be, properly supported. The problem is that political debates […]

This article in The Washington Post, which actually does a good job of chronicling McCain’s wildly fluctuating positions, still shows how strong the resistance is to deviating from the established campaign narrative about John McCain. What’s most disconcerting is the way it suggests that McCain has secretly been for a conditional withdrawal from Iraq all […]