Adam Weinstein

Engagement Editor

I'm Mother Jones' engagement editor and Tumblrizer, specializing in explanatory journalism and new-media reporting. As a Navy vet and ex-Iraq contractor, I'm also committed to articulating all things martial—good, bad, and weird—to new audiences.

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Adam Weinstein is Mother Jones' engagement editor, having previously served the magazine as its national security reporter and copy editor. Before that, he worked at the Wall Street Journal, the Village Voice, and the Tallahassee Democrat. He's written for the New York Times, New York magazine, GQ, and Newsweek. A Navy veteran, two-day Jeopardy champion and ex-political scientist, he also did a recession-fueled stint as a military contractor in Iraq. For more about Adam and his writing, click here.

Why Was Cheney in Saudi Arabia?

—By Adam Weinstein

| Tue May. 4, 2010 11:59 AM PDT

[UPDATED] Foreign Policy's David Kenner pointed out Monday that former vice president and ex-Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney just went on a junket to meet with Saudi Arabian leaders, a quiet pow-wow that's been discussed in the Saudi media but not so much over here. Cheney—who's been busy defending torture and complaining that Barack Obama lets world leaders "think they're dealing with a weak president"—weakened the president by visiting a leading torture regime and its caliph, King Abdullah.

So, what was the ex-veep doing in Riyadh?

The obvious answer would be: something financially advantageous. Cheney, who oversaw the Saudi staging of Gulf War I, has always maintained good relations with the kingdom and its elites—relations that certainly came in handy after the war, when his oil-services and all-around shady operation, Halliburton, won lots of US and Saudi contracts to help extract the kingdom's petroleum wealth—and buttress its national defenses.

But those sorts of financial entanglements—and high-level contacts—can quickly deteriorate into policy interference. Which wouldn't be new territory for Cheney, who as CEO helped Halliburton skirt international and US terror sanctions on trade with Iran in order to make a quick buck.

If his Saudi expedition is intended in any way to undermine the US administration's foreign policy—and his track record here isn't great—then some politicians might argue he's skirting the law...the longstanding Logan Act, to be exact. Mind you, nobody's ever been prosecuted under that act, which prohibits private citizens from setting US foreign policy. But just a few years ago, Cheney's GOP colleagues in Congress constantly used the Logan Act to threaten Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, and even promulgated ethical guidelines on foreign post-employment activities for Republican politicians. (Cheney and fellow GOPers may not have read those guidelines, though, since the link to them seems to be dead.)

Look, it could be nothing. Richard Cheney, whether he's a nice guy or not, whether he's right or not, is entitled to his travels and meetings. And he's probably got a lot more friends in that desert-straddling medieval-style theocracy than he does in these United States. The least he could do is keep his countrymen in the loop. But hey, why start now?

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Times Square Bomb: The Right's Nuttiest Theory

—By Adam Weinstein

| Mon May. 3, 2010 12:16 PM PDT

[Updated] This much we know: A US citizen born in Pakistan has been arrested for allegedly parking a Nissan Pathfinder in Times Square Saturday night, loaded with fertilizer that doesn't combust, a kid's alarm clock that likely didn't tick, several gallons of gas, some propane tanks, and a few M80 firecrackers. Attorney General Eric Holder has released a statement saying Shahzad was "taken into custody at JFK Airport in New York as he attempted to board a flight to Dubai." There's a lot we have yet to learn about what this news means, but it probably rules out one favorite conservative theory about the attempted bombing—that left-wing protesters took advantage of May Day (aka International Workers' Day) to make a big bang in New York's neon-soaked seat of capitalism. Even before the bomb was found, a blogger at Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism blog unleashed a post titled: "Note To New York Times, MSNBC, WaPo and CNN: May Day Is Here and So Are the Actual Violent Protesters." (Your money quote: "Leftist May Day protesters are so cowardly, many of them wear masks during their rampages. Look for them in Los Angeles, as well as other major cities in America and Europe.") Another reminded his choir that environmentalists, not Tea Partiers, are the truly violent types.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Arizona: It Just Got a Lot Worse

—By Adam Weinstein

| Fri Apr. 30, 2010 4:53 PM PDT

When Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed the nation's most draconian immigration law last week, criminalizing illegal immigration (and, many critics say, being a minority), she had a good political reason for doing so: Joe Arpaio.

Joe's the aging sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona (which includes Phoenix), and his disdain for brown people, civil liberties, federal authority, and Constitutional law are pretty well documented at Mother Jones and elsewhere. A man with a Pravda-esque communications machine that would be the envy of any politician on any level, he lords over Maricopa's swelling prison population with the swagger of an antebellum South Carolina planter driving his slaves. He's made prisoners wear pink panties, stuck them in sweltering tents in the desert, screwed with their food rations, cited fake laws, gone after news reporters, and generally made nativism the reason for his existence on this heavenly sphere.

He made arresting Latinos fashionable and, after many run-ins with the feds over such practices, was likely the main inspiration behind Arizona's new immigration code. In short, Brewer felt she had to sign last week's immigration bill, because she felt Arpaio's breath on her neck. She had to appear as tough on brown people as Arpaio does, lest he decide to challenge her in the GOP primary.

So she signed it. And guess what? Arpaio's still going to run against her. Sources in the sheriff's department, which will likely double as his campaign staff (no new thing there), say his paperwork's filed. And on his Twitter account - where you can read about his Washington Post interview today, or his "crime suppression/illegal immigration" operations briefings, or his anger about "out of town critics" - he recently tweeted that his wife wants him to run. And he's already the frontrunner in Arizona Republicans' minds.

So why not run? What does he have to fear? Latino turnout in the Phoenix metro area? Problem solved!

Here, then, is to Arizona: one of the prettiest states in the union, soon to be the first breakaway republic in the new confederacy of Inner America.

The Great Crist eBay Selloff!

—By Adam Weinstein

| Fri Apr. 30, 2010 1:08 PM PDT

Two things you can always count on Republicans to do with astounding alacrity: Burn bridges and turn a quick buck. And thanks to the party defection of moderate Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, GOPers plan on doing both in one swift move!

Crist, of course, announced yesterday he'd run for senator as an independent, sidestepping what by all accounts would have been a GOP primary face-smashing at the hands of babyfaced archconservative and Tea Party darling Marco Rubio. The state Republican apparatus, which had recently been purged of its Crist-friendly chairman, wasted no time in implementing its omerta code against the sitting governor, announcing that they'd take down an oil painting of Crist at the party headquarters and dump it for a quick sale on eBay. "He's been gone a long while," state party ~~commissar~~ chairman John Thrasher complained of Crist, after saying he'd sell the painting. [Full video is below.]

This is no small stunt, mind you. That portrait—a $7,500 rendering of the governor who was once called "Chain Gang Charlie"—is actually the focus of a possible probe into financial misappropriations by the state party. And it's tough to tell whether state GOPers were being sincere, or if they were just trying to fit their size 10s into their mouths as usual—like RNC Chairman Michael Steele did yesterday when he blustered: "There will be no senator Crist." Which, of course, could look really bad if Crist wins...and the GOP seeks his vote in their caucus.

As of this writing, there's no oil painting of Charlie on eBay. But there's lots of great other stuff, forming a fungible, melodramatic narrative of the governor's political life to date: the many faces of Crist! Here's a brief selection:

An autographed "Charlie Crist: GOVERNOR" business card, along with some cards signed by some other shlubs who run some other states, but who cares about them? The top bid thus far is $9.39, which is slightly more than a buck per governor!
A campaign button from Charlie Crist's gubernatorial campaign, reminding conservatives that he hates crime. "You just can't chain a good man down," it reads, along with a shot of the guv, a set of shackles, and a quote from Crist himself: "Let's bring hard labor back to the penal system." [UPDATE: Sold for $11.61!!]
A "John McCain/Charlie Crist" button from the 2008 presidential campaign. Has a reserve price of $1.99. No bids yet.
A button calling Crist "The Right Choice" for president in 2012. Available for instant purchase in bulk quantities!
Then there's the seller who claims to possess "PICS of FL GOV CHARLIE CRIST snorting lines of COCAINE!" (Why not? After all, he is a graduate of that esteemed party school, Florida State.) They can be yours for a starting bid of $600,000. Hey, the seller's got a 100 percent positive rating. So buy with confidence!

Racist Driver Dupes Washington Post

—By Adam Weinstein

| Thu Apr. 29, 2010 2:14 PM PDT

[UPDATED] Last week, Mother Jones gave you the rundown on a Virginia motorist who considered the back of his Ford pickup the best forum to display his anger over Islam, the end of the Confederacy, and all things not Aryan and Hitler-related. Yesterday, that driver, Doug Story, sought out reporters at Washington's paper of record to argue he's not a racist—just a NASCAR fan. The Washington Post dutifully played along, printing Story's explanation with few caveats. But if Story thought he could control his public image, perhaps he should have updated his Facebook profile first to conceal his apparent affinity for organized neo-Nazi groups and white-power theories.

Doug Story, a dump-truck driver for the Virginia Department of Transportation and a resident of the Fairfax area in Northern Virginia, told the Washington Post this is all a big misunderstanding. He said the numbers 14 and 88 on his vanity plate—which line up with well-worn neo-Nazi and white supremacist codes—simply refer to the numbers of his favorite NASCAR drivers, Tony Stewart and Dale Earnhardt Jr. (Which sounds slightly fishy, since fans of one don't generally have much love for the other.)

"There is absolutely no way I'd have anything to do with Hitler or Nazis," Story said Wednesday. He contacted The Washington Post after an article about his plate appeared last week; the state, citing privacy rules, had declined to release the identity of the plate's owner. "My sister-in-law and my niece are Jewish. I went to my niece's bat mitzvah when she turned 13 three years ago. Does that sound like something an anti-Semite would do?"

That's all well and good. However, Story's Facebook profile—which confirms his employment with the state—tells a different story. [UPDATE: The original profile has since been taken offline, but a screenshot is available here.] His bio reads:

100% WHITE MAN, 100% ARYAN, 100% PRO-LIFE (Children are innocent), 100% PRO DEATH PENALTY (Criminal Scum aren't innocent).
Over the past 28 years; I, like David Duke, have had an Awakening.

His musical tastes include "white power metal," his favorite book is David Duke's My Awakening, and he lists among his favorite quotations this maxim: "If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten." He's a fan of the controversial Facebook group with the horribly misspelled title "DEAR LORD, THIS YEAR YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTOR, PATRICK SWAYZIE. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTRESS, FARAH FAWCETT. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE SINGER, MICHAEL JACKSON. I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW, MY FAVORITE PRESIDENT IS BARACK OBAMA. AMEN."

Most concerning of all, though, is the link he includes as his personal website: He is known as "Confederado" on the site newsaxon.org, which bills itself as "An online community for whites by whites." It also includes banner ads for the National Socialist Movement—that is to say, the Nazis—whose website, nsm88.com, apparently includes a shout-out to Dale Jr. Or, Hitler!

Generally speaking, it's not a standard journalistic practice, for a lot of reasons, to make hay about an individual private citizen and his political activities. But in seeking out a public news forum—and working for the state of Virginia—Story submitted himself to public scrutiny, all the more so because his personal beliefs appear not to square with the persona he sought to project in the Post. And the contents of those beliefs are in the public interest—wishing physical ill on the president, who happens to be multiracial, which happens to offend the sensibilities of David Duke and neo-Nazis, who happen to figure prominently in Story's apparent worldview, which is a worldview widely seen as invalid and threatening to American social and political life.

Story's entitled to any belief; he's also entitled to freedom from harassment. (So please don't go after him.) But in what's been a banner year for nativism, racism, and uncivility in American political life, Story also should be willing to account for those beliefs, and all the baggage that they carry.