Adam Serwer

Ben Wittes responds to my post on the Rumsfeld torture cases: And Gabor Rona of Human Rights First, in an email yesterday, told me that he “must take issue with your endorsement of your reader’s ambivalence about suing Rumsfeld as an attempt to ‘relitigate.’ Fact is, you can’t ‘relitigate’ that which has not yet been […]

The Shariah-panic crowd is convinced of the far-fetched theory that American Muslims are involved in a sinister, secret plot to infiltrate American political institutions in order to establish Taliban-style Islamic law in the United States. But what if there actually was a religious ideology holding that only people of a certain strain of belief should […]

Conservative George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr has bravely predicted the outcome of the case against the individual health care mandate once it goes to the Supreme Court, and he seems pretty confident it’ll be upheld: Here are my guesses. Justices Breyer and Ginsburg are pretty obvious votes for the mandate, as they dissented […]

There’s a lot of chatter about the decision of the moderators in last night’s Republican debate to ask Michele Bachmann “As president, would you be submissive to your husband?” But for all the focus on whether or not the question is sexist, the real problem is that asking it mostly helps the candidate without shedding […]

The latest health care ruling from the 11th Circuit, striking down the individual mandate, uses the word “unprecedented” to describe the mandate more than a dozen times*. The opinion concludes that “It cannot be denied that the individual mandate is an unprecedented exercise of congressional power.” The 2-1 ruling is significant in that it marks […]

I have to admit I’m confused by this reader email posted by Ben Wittes on the recent Donald Rumsfeld torture civil cases, which he says ” totally represents my own uncertainty” on the matter. On the one hand, there are some pretty carefully-thought-out legal arguments as to why the lawsuits should be dismissed: Extension of […]

Debates are often a decent barometer of ideology, since candidates fall all over themselves to ingratiate themselves to their respective bases. Republicans have long since coalesced around a position of denying individuals accused of terrorism due process, but it’s still remarkable to watch Republican presidential candidates reject due process out of hand. Here’s Minnesota Congresswoman […]

There’s a pretty vigorous discussion thread on my Bachmann post, but I want to follow up with a couple of points. Some folks argued that the fact that Bachmann endorsed the authors in question doesn’t inherently mean she shares their distorted view of slavery. This is a mistake, as Ryan Lizza explains that to whatever […]

President Obama hosted an Iftar dinner celebrating the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan yesterday, and used it as an opportunity to urge tolerance and recognize the contributions of Muslim Americans. At one point in his speech, he pointed out that, contrary to conservatives claiming that Muslims collectively attacked America on 9/11, there […]

Matthew Yglesias wonders if Jonathan Podhoretz is too stupid to understand that North Korean style communism and American style democracy are the only political systems available: My baseline assumption with this kind of thing is that we’re looking at dishonesty, but having read Podhoretz’s opus on the greatness of George W Bush it seems plausible […]