Adam Serwer

Glenn Greenwald argues, essentially, that liberals applauding the killing of Osama bin Laden are setting aside their principles because they see bin Laden as a uniquely evil person to whom the rules simply do not apply: Beyond the apparent indifference to how this killing took place, what has also surprised me somewhat is the lack […]

By now, you’ve seen Talking Funny, HBO’s inspired onetime special on standup comedy that aired in April. If not, lie. For one hour, four giants of contemporary comedy — Jerry Seinfeld, Ricky Gervais, Chris Rock, and Louis C.K. — delved into the process and pains of comedy as an art form. It’s an un-moderated foray […]

I’ve spent a lot of time this week talking about what’s wrong with San Francisco, and hardly enough on the things that make it worth all the trouble. So here’s a simple charm: soul music. Sure, it’s got a different musical history than, say, Detroit or Chicago. But it’s there (just ask Oliver Wang). A […]

As you’ve probably heard, the release of President Obama’s long-form birth certificate last week has basically sliced the number of “birthers” in half (according to a Washington Post poll). If only it were so easy to disprove one of the most durable conspiracy theories of all time: the idea that the William born to John […]

Yesterday, I was doing what all card-carrying Liberal Academic Elites do with their Thursday mornings — you know: sipping a soy latte, streaming NPR on my MacBook, grading midterms — when I heard Neal Conan say: Fifty years ago this month, seven black and six white people took the fight for civil rights to the […]

Over on the main blog, Jamelle writes: Sen then offers three items — immigration reform, job assistance and corporate tax reform — that Obama should pursue while he still has the time. Unfortunately, political capital isn’t that straightforward. As we saw at the beginning of Obama’s presidency, the mere fact of popularity (or a large […]

I’ve been getting some push-back on Twitter from transparency advocates about my support for the decision not to release the postmortem photos of Osama bin Laden. Since I’m sure this won’t be the end of the controversy (two words: birth certificate), and since I’m strongly pro-transparency myself, I thought it was worth another bite at […]

Over at New America Media, Bay Area organizers Alicia Garza and Esperanza Tervalon-Daumont think so. Here’s their case for ranked choice voting, (also known as instant runoff voting): Perhaps the most important way that RCV helps voters of color is by allowing several candidates from the same ethnic community to run against each other without […]