Adam Serwer

Matthew Yglesias on Ron Paul: After looking at his positions and statements, the most remarkable thing is that if it weren’t for his loud fanbase of self-proclaimed libertarians you wouldn’t really think this is the platform of a libertarian. He’s loudly trumpeting his plan to impose criminal penalties on women who terminate their pregnancies and […]

Texas Governor Rick Perry defines what now counts as being “moderate” on immigration policy in the Republican Party–making it so that only those undocumented immigrants willing to serve in the military would be eligible for citizenship. “I think there is a path to citizenship for those young men and women who have served their country,” […]

Jonathan Capeheart has an amusing post on Mitt Romney’s call for Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, to be tried in the U.S., noting that Romney had previously called for military commissions for all suspected terrorists. Romney, as Zaid Jilani first noted at ThinkProgress, said that “We would try him here and see that justice is […]

Responding to Jeffrey Toobin’s profile of Clarence and Virginia Thomas, Jonathan Blanks shoots down the idea that gun rights and civil rights are unrelated issues. Toobin wrote that “Thomas finds a racial angle on a broad array of issues, including those which appear to be scarcely related to traditional civil rights, like campaign finance or […]

Republicans have seized on the administration’s shift on deportations — nominally the same policy they’ve always had but one that’s beginning to be reflected in what they’re actually doing — to argue that the administration is instituting “amnesty.” Republican leaders reacted to Mr. Obama’s new policy by stepping up their rejection of his approach. Representative […]

I suppose it’s counterintuitive to argue that we’re less militaristic than we used to be, but I think this piece from William Deresiewicz gets at the strange dynamic at play with regard to Americans’ recent deference to the military: As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have dragged on, other purposes have come into play. […]

While the conflict in Libya really isn’t over yet despite yesterday’s euphoria over rebel gains, some conservatives are already freaking out over the fact that the draft constitution states “Islam is the Religion of the State, and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (Sharia).” Is this shocking or surprising? Not particularly. The constitutions […]

Just a reminder: As I noted earlier this month, the voting section of the Justice Department is sending election observers to the primaries in Noxubee County Mississippi today, where the Bush administration filed a case on behalf of white voters under Section 11(b), the same part of the Voting Rights Act used to secure an […]

Trevor Aaronson has a very important piece in Mother Jones questioning the nature of the FBI’s many sting operations that involve the arrest of suspects who commit to carrying out FBI-facilitated terror plots, but I think this part of the piece is a bit unfair: Ever since 9/11, counterterrorism has been the FBI’s No. 1 […]

The New York Times has a feature asking “If I were president” which basically involves the enlisted getting wistful about all the things they’d do if you know, Congress didn’t existed and if the office of the presidency conferred the ability to work magic. As for me well, if I were president, I would make […]