The FBI's Spies
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...
View ArticleSupposedly Anti-White DoJ Monitoring Primary Elections In Noxubee
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...
View ArticleSharia In Libya
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...
View ArticleIt's Not Amnesty
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...
View ArticleGun Rights And Civil Rights
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...
View ArticlePerry's Very Limited Immigration Moderation
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...
View ArticleDomestic Surveillance, NYPD Style
The Associated Press has an astounding story on the depth of a domestic surveillance effort conducted by the NYPD, and the possibility that it goes beyond the permissive FBI guidelines that have...
View ArticleQ&A: Local Law Enforcement And Domestic Surveillance
Earlier today, the AP reported on a massive domestic intelligence gathering operation run by the NYPD. I spoke with the Brennan Center's Faiza Patel, author of the center's report on domestic...
View ArticlePerry: "There’s not going to be a Social Security and Medicare program"
Jed Lewison has video of what I think is probably Texas Governor Rick Perry's most glaring political weakness:
View ArticleThe Nice Guy And The Manic Pixie Dream Girl
This is a bit off topic, but it's my blog and my last week here so bear with me. I recently watched The Adjustment Bureau, a sort of sci-fi romance where the world is regularly nudged away from...
View ArticleFreedom For Some, Ctd
Conor Friedersdorf, in a very gracious and charitable critique thinks my priorities, as a liberal with some libertarianish views, are skewed with regards to Ron Paul:
View ArticleDept Of Unnecessary Ledes
Yesterday Radley Balko tweeted this article on another case involving citizens' facing consequences for recording the police. You have to love what they thought was important enough to put right at the...
View ArticleThe Problem With "Post-Blackness"
I'm sympathetic to the emotional roots of Touré's conception of "post-blackness" and I find the concept kind of ridiculous. Not just because whiteness, rather than blackness, has historically been the...
View ArticleWest On Black Intellectuals And Liberal Magazines
My profile of Cornel West and Tavis Smiley's Poverty Tour will be in the print edition of next month's print edition Prospect, but I was having a conversation with Jamelle yesterday that reminded me of...
View ArticleOregon Man Charged With Setting Fire To A Mosque
The Civil Rights Division has announced that it's charging an Oregon man with allegedly setting a mosque in Corvallis on fire. The larger context here is that the mosque was attended by Mohamud Osman...
View ArticleA Dance With Dragons And The Return To Fantasy
So this is going to be a massively spoiler-heavy post, so those of you who haven't read A Dance With Dragons yet or are fans of the TV series Game of Thrones and don't want some major things to be...
View ArticleMPDG, Ctd
Alyssa Rosenberg has some further thoughts on the Manic Pixie Dream Girl character archetype:
View ArticleYou Can't Believe Your Eyes
Eyewitness misidentification is a leading factor in wrongful convictions -- according to the Innocence Project, more than 75 percent of DNA exonerations involved cases of eyewitness misidentification....
View ArticleUnpossible: Racism Against Latinos In Arizona
That's the basic conclusion of a challenge to the Voting Rights Act by the state of Arizona, which is seeking to overturn the law as unconstitutional. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act mandates that...
View ArticleAlleged Oregon Arsonist On "Secret Muslims" And "Christian Warriors"
The indictment of Cody Crawford, who allegedly attempted to burn down a mosque in Oregon, is notable for a few reasons beyond the fact of the alleged crime itself. Crawford is alleged to have targeted...
View ArticleGOP Candidates Pledge To Abolish Marriage Equality In D.C.
Texas Governor Rick Perry has joined the other two top-tier Republican presidential candidates, Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann, in signing the...
View ArticleA City Divided
September 11 was good for Washington, D.C.'s economy, but the expansion has not helped many on the bottom.
View ArticleAll the President's Frenemies
In publicly attacking Obama are Tavis Smiley and Cornel West upholding the tradition of MLK or acting out of personal pique—or both?
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