Adam Serwer

Jonathan Cohn has a quick evaluation of Obama’s deficit proposal on the policy merits, but I just want to point out that despite the signs the president might tack right on this issue, he basically ended up giving the most full-throated rhetorical defense of American liberalism I think I’ve ever heard him give. As I’ve […]

Annie Lowrey has a (mostly) modest proposal on the deficit. Do nothing: So how does doing nothing actually return the budget to health? The answer is that doing nothing allows all kinds of fiscal changes that politicians generally abhor to take effect automatically. First, doing nothing means the Bush tax cuts would expire, as scheduled, […]

Brian at Right Wing Watch flags the Family Research Council’s classy reaction to D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray‘s protest of the provisions in the budget deal that would prohibit D.C. from spending its own money on abortions for women who can’t afford them: And for what? According to the latest D.C. census, the number of African-Americans […]

Peter Suderman reacts to Barack Obama‘s touting of Mitt Romney‘s mandate-driven health-care reforms in Massachusetts: Watching Democrats tease Romney like this continues to be amusing. But I wonder if it might not backfire slightly, at least for those who continue to be genuinely happy with the precedent set by the Massachusetts health care overhaul. After […]

The Pew Center on the States, which has done a lot of groundbreaking research on criminal-justice policy, has a new report out showing that corrections represent the fastest-growing costs to state budgets second only to Medicaid. The prison population has grown by more than 700 percent since 1973, while costs over the last 20 years […]

Apparently Rand Paul might shut down the government. The Dems’ deficit-reduction balancing act. Al Shabab terrorist Omar Hammami can’t rap. Equal Pay Day tips for working women.

This morning I posted over at Greg Sargent‘s about the reports that Obama would be embracing the proposal developed by deficit commission co-chairs Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles. Greg points out that during the press briefing Jay Carney said this wasn’t the case. Steve Benen lays out what I think is the most optimistic scenario: […]

I just don’t really understand the significance of this post from Ben Smith on whether or not black people no longer like Donald Trump because of his birtherism: Trump’s shows boast a solid African-American viewership and black cast members [and a recent NBC/WSJ poll found, according to NBC’s Domenico Montenaro, that the among the groups […]

Dave Weigel has a good take on D.C.’s role as a bargaining chip in the budget negotiations. It reminded me of something that was apparently left out of the negotiations — a vote on D.C.’s marriage-equality law. Republican Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio had proposed forcing a vote on the law back in January, but […]

This was the kicker to Ronald Brownstein‘s piece on the racial composition of the American electorate in 2012, which I argued previews some rather ugly identity politics: Given Latinos’ growing electoral importance and the GOP’s sharp right turn on immigration issues, some senior Democrats privately say they would not be surprised if Republicans try to […]