Adam Serwer

Michelle Dean doesn’t think Bridesmaids is groundbreaking: But Annie is never presented to us as That Sort of Girl. She has no objection to the proceedings that could be even vaguely categorized as feminist. Instead, hazily, it’s suggested that her problem with Lillian’s wedding is simply that everyone else’s life seems to be moving forward […]

The Supreme Court’s originalism, as any libertarian can tell you, runs into a serious hippie problem whenever marijuana is involved. That is, it doesn’t really matter what conservative theories of the Constitution say when there’s an opportunity to punch a dirty hippie in the face. The Fourth Amendment affirms the “right of the people to […]

Greg Sargent has obtained CIA Director Leon Panetta‘s letter to Sen. John McCain confirming that torturous interrogations played at best a small role in discovering Osama bin Laden‘s whereabouts: Let me further point out that we first learned about the facilitator/courier’s nom de guerre from a detainee not in CIA custody in 2002. It is […]

On the surface, Mohamed et al v. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. was about whether or not the government could invoke the states-secrets doctrine in order to dismiss an entire case on the grounds that it would expose government secrets and harm national security. The state-secrets doctrine, prior to the last administration, had typically been used to […]

I know I’m late on this, but for the last time, Michael Gerson‘s arguments in support of the war on drugs are pretty silly: Even by this permissive standard, drug legalization fails. The de facto decriminalization of drugs in some neighborhoods — say, in Washington, D.C. — has encouraged widespread addiction. Children, freed from the […]

Jane Mayer has another blockbuster story on the origins of the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, revealing that the NSA had a program in development called ThinThread that would have done more to protect Americans’ rights but nixed it because — well, because they could. As with torture, one comes away with the disturbing conclusion […]

The key to materially supporting terrorism is to get prominent advocates from both parties. The earmark that ID’ed Osama bin Laden. Daily Kos gets some great cartoonists. Dana Goldstein on Joel Klein.

Ann Friedman and the folks at GOOD have made this animated timeline of the hunt for Osama bin Laden, which I would have added a few things to but is nonetheless cool to watch :

Bruce Hoffman has a sobering piece in West Point’s Counterrorism Sentinel arguing that Osama bin Laden‘s death won’t be the end of al Qaeda, because terrorist organizations tend to be resistant to losing their leadership: In this respect, history unfortunately may be on al-Qa`ida’s side. Decapitation has rarely provided a decisive end to a terrorist […]

I want to thank Conor Friedersdorf for listing me among his bloggers of the year in his mammoth compilation “fantastic” pieces of journalism: – In lively, exquisitely crafted prose, Will Wilkinson offered posts at Democracy In America that managed a rare trifecta: they were provocative, logically sound, and infused with razor sharp wit. – Glenn […]