Adam Serwer

Reporter

Adam Serwer is a reporter at Mother Jones. Formerly a staff writer at the American Prospect, he has written for the Washington Post, the Root, the Village Voice, and the New York Daily News.

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National Review: Cain Is More "Authentically Black" Than Obama

—By Adam Serwer

| Wed Nov. 9, 2011 10:00 AM PST

The National Review is the nation's leading authority on blackness.

National Review's Victor Davis Hanson has written the dumbest column of the year in defense of Herman Cain, marching out every possible cliché of right-wing victimhood, infantile racial identity politics, and gender stereotypes.

Beginning from the premise that Republicans suffer from sex scandals but Democrats don't, Hanson mentions one Democrat who was impeached (Bill Clinton), another who resigned in disgrace (Eliot Spitzer), and another who is facing criminal charges over allegedly spending campaign funds to help hide his mistress (John Edwards).

Hanson would have you believe that Republicans George H.W. Bush, Dan Quayle, John McCain, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas are supposed to envy these men for avoiding any real consequences for their transgressions. "Both supporters and detractors agree that Cain should know by now that alleged misdemeanors by Republican frontrunners are always more serious than known transgressions by Democratic rivals," Hanson writes, having disproved his own argument. Presumably with a straight face, Hanson glibly mentions former segregationist Republican Strom Thurmond's "wandering hands," which is a euphemism for "former white supremacist who fathered a black child out of wedlock and managed to keep it a secret until after his death."

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

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Arizona's Anti-Immigrant Standard-Bearer Russell Pearce Goes Down

—By Adam Serwer

| Tue Nov. 8, 2011 10:12 PM PST

Voters in Maricopa County, Arizona made history Tuesday night, recalling Republican State Senate President Russell Pearce, the author of the state's draconian anti-illegal immigration law, SB 1070. It was the first time an Arizona state legislator had been recalled in history, let alone a sitting State Senate president. As Elise Foley reports, immigrants' rights activists devoted a lot of time, money and effort to recalling Pearce. Maricopa County is no swing district—it hasn't voted for a Democrat for President since Harry Truman.

Pearce, whose anti-immigrant agenda catapulted him to national prominence last year, was defeated by Republican challenger Jerry Lewis by a margin of 53-47 percent. Lewis struck a moderate tone on immigration, particularly in comparison with Pearce, whose rhetoric on the issue was often loaded with noxious racial language. Despite outraising Lewis, getting a sham candidate on the ballot meant to split the anti-Pearce vote, and engaging in campaign tactics meant to manipulate Latinos into throwing away their votes, Pearce lost to Lewis by a decisive margin. Pearce's reputation also suffered after he was implicated the Fiesta Bowl scandal, in which he was accused of illegally accepting game tickets.

All the same, although recalling Pearce inflicts a measure of retribution for immigrants' rights activists in the state, much of Pearce's anti-immigrant agenda has already become mainstream in the Republican Party. When the Obama administration challenged SB 1070 in court, Republicans rallied around the state and blamed the president for failing to enforce laws against illegal immigration. Although most SB 1070 copycats failed, states like Alabama and Georgia have enacted similar laws. Of the two current Republican front-runners, Herman Cain likes to joke about killing unauthorized immigrants with an electrified death fence, and Mitt Romney smothered Texas Governor Rick Perry's primary run by slamming Perry for his decision to let unauthorized immigrant teenagers pay in-state tuition at Texas colleges.

Pearce's recall was a historic event. But Pearce had already made history by helping to make "attrition through enforcement" the primary approach to immigration policy in the Republican Party. The question now is whether anyone in the GOP is actually having second-thoughts about the party's anti-immigrant agenda after Pearce's loss.

ACA Defenders Still Can't Answer "The Gotcha Question"

—By Adam Serwer

| Tue Nov. 8, 2011 11:49 AM PST

At first glance, Tuesday's DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruling looks like a slam-dunk win for defenders of the Affordable Care Act. A closer look suggests that the law's defenders have yet to come up with a strong response to their opponents' most effective arguments.

The opinion was written by Ronald Reagan appointee Lawrence Silberman and joined by Jimmy Carter appointee Harry Edwards. The dissenting opinion from George W. Bush appointee Brett Cavanaugh avoids arguing the legal merits of the challenge, instead arguing that the courts don't have jurisdiction to decide the case before the law goes into effect. The key paragraph in Silberman's opinion comes towards the end, as he notes previous historic instances in which regulation considered "intrusive" by opponents were upheld:

It certainly is an encroachment on individual liberty, but it is no more so than a command that restaurants or hotels are obliged to serve all customers regardless of race, that gravely ill individuals cannot use a substance their doctors described as the only effective palliative for excruciating pain, or that a farmer cannot grow enough wheat to support his own family. The right to be free from federal regulation is not absolute, and yields to the imperative that Congress be free to forge national solutions to national problems, no matter how local–or seemingly passive–their individual origins.

Conservatives have argued that the mandate forces individuals who would otherwise not buy health insurance to engage in commercial activity. The government points out that since everyone ultimately seeks medical treatment, the distinction is meaningless. Silberman, like previous judges who have upheld the ACA's individual mandate, argues that the "activity/inactivity" distinction doesn't fit with prior legal precedents establishing the authority of Congress to regulate interstate commerce under the Constitution.

What the law's critics will seize on, however, is Silberman's observation that although the government argues that "the Government does stress that the health care market is factually unique," it "concedes the novelty of the mandate and the lack of any doctrinal limiting principles."

While "novelty" isn't inherently an issue when it comes to the constitutionality of a given law, the "lack of any doctrinal limiting principles" is the most powerful argument critics of the ACA have, the idea that if the government can force you to buy health care, it can force you to do anything. Silberman describes this argument as "troubling, but not fatal," because of prior legal precedent supporting the ACA. The law's defenders unquestionably have legal precedent on their side. But its opponents have an incredibly effective political argument based on constitutional first principles.

The reason politics may matter more than legal precedent is simply that judges, for all the pretense and rhetoric about faithfully interpreting the law, are political actors with their own personal ideologies. More importantly, although the Supreme Court has only rarely favored those seeking to limit the government's power under the Commerce Clause, it has done so recently when government lawyers were unable to articulate any "doctrinal limiting principles" on the government's authority. UCLA Law Professor Adam Winkler refers to this as the "gotcha question," essentially arguing that the government's inability to "articulate meaningful limits on Congress' power" may prove to be the law's undoing.

Despite the ACA's decisive victory on the DC Circuit, Silberman's ruling shows that the law's defenders clearly haven't figured out how to do that yet. Although that may not be a "fatal" flaw in Silberman's view, the conservative Supreme Court Justices the government needs to persuade are likely to feel differently.

High Fantasy Is A Subgenre of Fantasy

—By Adam Serwer

| Tue Nov. 8, 2011 8:45 AM PST

El Rey Brujo de Angmar tonymadrid photography/Flickr

Erik Kain makes a rather broad statement about fantasy as a genre:

Most fantasy is written by British and American authors. Traditionally, fantasy has woven together Medieval feudalism and faerie folklore in some fashion or other. Yes, there are myths from all countries, and even fantasy literature written in Germany or Spain or elsewhere, but the market has been historically dominated by the Anglosphere, and I think is rooted more in the myths of the Anglosphere specifically than in Christianity more broadly.

What Kain is talking about here is not "fantasy" but Nordic-inspired High Fantasy, a sub-genre he correctly identifies as being rooted in a mixture of Christian and pre-Christian concepts. Calling this "fantasy" rather than identifying it as a specific sub-genre ignores the vast canon of fantasy stemming from other parts of the world, including Arab and Islamic countries (from which Americans get those zombie flicks we love so much) and fantasy from China and Japan. If you accept that fantasy has gone beyond literature into other forms of storytelling, then in the realms of comic books, video games, and animation East Asian fantasy is arguably more popular than the High Fantasy Kain identifies as defining the genre. Referring to works of fantasy inspired by medival Europe as the genre itself is identifying a baseline "normal" based on cultural perspective rather than objective factors. Tales associated with Jubei Yagyu, Sinbad, or even Anansi are no less fantastic for being non-European.

To briefly address Kain's other point about the supposed absence of Jewish fantasy writers (actually untrue), the fact that medieval Europe was incredibly hostile towards Jews might explain why there aren't a really large number of Jewish writers who specialize in that particular sub-genre of fantasy. But Kain seems to buy the notion that Jewish authors are hostile to fantasy in general, a theory which, as Spencer Ackerman pointed out some time ago, fails rather spectacularly in the face of the existence of the American superhero. To exclude other cultures' fantasy offerings is to define the genre in a uselessly narrow fashion, and to ask why Jews and Muslims, Japanese and Ghanians don't come up with fantasies that resemble exactly those of British writers is to ask a question with a profoundly obvious answer.

Continuing Anxiety Over Black Flags In The Middle East

—By Adam Serwer

| Tue Nov. 8, 2011 8:08 AM PST

Islamic State of Iraq Flag

As I wrote last week, the appearance of a flag used by Al Qaeda in Iraq flying over a Benghazi courthouse has caused some anxiety over the extent of extremist sympathies among rebels in Libya.

A similar flag—which Brandeis researcher Aaron Zelin identifies as being associated with the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella organization of jihadists that includes al-Qaeda's Iraqi franchise—has been popping up elsewhere in the region. This second flag has been described in some quarters as cause for concern and been greeted with outright hysteria in others. Earlier this morning, the Clarion Fund, a conservative organization where current Mitt Romney adviser and former Lebanese Forces member Walid Phares serves on the advisory board, sent out an email warning that Al Qaeda "had seized control of Libya."

Writing at Foreign Policy, Will McCants, a former State Department counterterrorism adviser, says that the flag's "appearance in Benghazi certainly raises questions about the sympathies of some within the movement that ousted Muammar al-Qaddafi, adding to widespread reports of fighters sympathetic to al Qaeda among the rebels." But he cautions against reading too much into the use of the flag:

[T]he appearance of the flag in other Arab countries is not necessarily evidence of growing support for al Qaeda or terrorist group's presence. It could just as easily be youth taking advantage of their newfound freedom to scare their elders, or repressed Salafis using the most shocking symbol possible to voice their anger in public. There is also an element of "Wish You Were Here" photography to many of the photos of the ISI's flag being unfurled around the Arab world and posted in jihadi forums. This is not to say that the appearance of the flags, particularly in protests, should be ignored. But more corroborating evidence is needed before hitting the panic button.

Former Libyan Islamic Fighting Group member and rebel commander Abduljawad Bedeen also downplayed the presence of the black flags, telling Reuters that, "First of all, al-Qaeda doesn't even have an official flag. And just because they've used a similar one doesn't mean they have exclusive rights to it...If they were to send people here they would have a very, very weak presence...I don't think the Libyan people would accept it." Although the words of a former LIFG member could be dismissed as mere spin, Libya expert Ronald Bruce St John told me something similar last week.

In the spirit of avoiding the panic button, it's worth recalling Osama bin Laden's 2004 message in which he bragged that "All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies."