Adam Serwer

Andrew Sullivan asks “where’s the fierce urgency of now?” with regards to Barack Obama and gay marriage, the movement towards which he describes as “The Civil Rights Movement of our time”. I think it’s useful to remember that the Civil Rights Movement was not lead by elected officials, but actually by community leaders who engaged […]

One of the more disconcerting aspects of the growth and use of immigrant detention centers is the enlisting of private prison corporation CCA to handle immigrant detainees. I was discussing Dana Priest and Amy Goldstein’s recent immigration story with a friend of mine named Renee Feltz who told me has been doing her own extensive […]

Spencer Ackerman is right that the complex version of Tony Stark in the comic book version of Iron Man can’t lend itself to the big screen–Marvel’s Civil War is an allegory of government overreaching that culminates in the symbolic death of American freedom with Captain America‘s assassination and that would still be a little heavy […]

The massive turnout of black voters this year is a beautiful thing, especially in the South, where black folks are making it known that there will be consequences to using them as scapegoats: Between an initial vote on April 22, when Mr. Childers fell just shy of getting the 50 percent he needed to win, […]

The subtext of some of the calls for the Clintons to release their tax returns was that Hillary‘s political career was entirely based on Bill being President. While the public certainly had a right to see the Clintons’ tax returns, the media has been noticeably less interested in Cindy McCain‘s financial information. Even if the […]

Amy Goldstein and Dana Priest report that the U.S. Government has been using a psychotropic drug called Haldol (among others), once used on political dissidents in the Soviet Union, to sedate immigrant detainees against their will during deportation. The problem is many of the detainees aren’t being violent or threatening, it’s just, you know, easier […]

Like Marie Cocco, I could come up with my own list of Media Matters clips and offensive merchandise that I could use to argue definitively that racism is worse than sexism. But I’m not sure what that would prove, other than that I believe the prejudice I’ve faced is qualitatively worse than the prejudice I […]

The Caucus has more on the Edwards endorsement: Mr. Edwards has carefully played down his aspirations for an administration role. In an interview in January, he said he would not accept a vice-presidential spot or Cabinet position. “No, absolutely not,” he said, shaking his head emphatically when asked. But privately, he told aides that he […]

Last night was the second southern election in which Republicans tried to derail a Democrat in a conservative congressional district by tying him to Barack Obama. Nevertheless, Democrat Travis Childers defeated Republican Greg Davis by eight points, despite Davis’ attempts to make Mississippi think he was really running against Rev. Jeremiah Wright. E.J. Dionne noted […]

Despite the blubbering from folks like Pat Buchanan that we are about to “lose the American Southwest” to Latino immigrants, The Washington Post reports that they are assimilating even faster than the folks who came here at the turn of the 20th Century. European immigrants a hundred years ago were not, it turns out, somehow […]