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Feminists Defend Conservative Writer against Sexist Hustler "Parody"

Adam Serwer — Thu, 24 May 2012 20:09:42 +0000

Conservative writer S.E. Cupp was recently the target of a sexist "parody" in Hustler magazine that I won't describe here because it's a family blog. Feminists, in response, have denounced Hustler for essentially telling Cupp that her proper role is as the object of sexual exploitation rather than a source of political commentary. Notably, Sandra Fluke, who was called a "slut" by Rush Limbaugh, tweeted that Hustler was trying to "limit [women] 2 being sexual figures & not more."

Zerlina Maxwell at Feministing writes:

While Hustler claims the picture is intended to be funny "satire," it simply is not funny. It's out of line, it's sexist, and it's an unacceptable form of misogyny. Women are under attack from all sides and no matter what political party you are in, I'm going to defend you from sexist attacks. I will not stand by in silence when a woman, any woman, is attacked in this way and belittled as nothing more than a sexual object. It's about disagreement over ideas; smearing and demeaning women should not part of the equation.

There isn't actually much difference between what Limbaugh was doing to Fluke and what Hustler did to Cupp. In both cases, the objective was to silence a women with contrary political views by insisting that they return to their proper place as objects of sexual desire for men. Conservatives objected to Limbaugh's use of coarse language, but many agreed with his underlying argument in referring to Fluke as a "slut" and a "prostitute."

That's not the only difference: As Digby points out, the forceful condemnations of Hustler from feminist circles stand in contrast to the responses from the right to the Limbaugh/Fluke incident, where mild denounciations were paired with adamant insistence that, whatever Limbaugh said about Fluke, conservative women have it much worse. Conservative writer Michelle Malkin, herself a frequent target of sexist and racist vitriol on Twitter from critics (which is sadly often a byproduct of being a woman who writes stuff on the Internet) pointed out that there were other names Limbaugh could have called Fluke:

I'll tell you why Rush was wrong. Young Sandra Fluke of Georgetown Law is not a "slut." She’s a moocher and a tool of the Nanny State. She’s a poster girl for the rabid Planned Parenthood lobby and its eugenics-inspired foremothers.

The reason for the discrepancy here is rather simple: Whereas liberals view sexism as a societal problem that shapes how we live our lives, many conservatives view it as an issue of liberals using sexist rhetoric against conservative women. That's why Malkin, a disciple of the "I know you are but what am I" school of political rhetoric, came up with the "war on conservative women" meme in response to Democratic rhetoric about Republicans "waging a war on women" by opposing access to contraception and holding up legislation like the Violence Against Women Act. This reflects a disciplined commitment to the Bender theory of discrimination: "This is the worst kind of discrimination: The kind against ME!"

Where conservatives look at the Hustler "parody" as indicative of liberal contempt for conservative women, feminists see a larger problem about how women are treated that affects everything from health insurance to how much you take home on your paycheck. To have condemned Limbaugh for his sexism in the same unconditional manner would have been a distraction, because the real problem isn't sexism, it's liberals. For feminists, sexism is the problem, period.

National Review Still Wrong on Civil Rights History

Adam Serwer — Thu, 24 May 2012 18:39:48 +0000

Jonathan Chait, Jonathan Bernstein and myself have all weighed in on Kevin D. Williamson's rather ahistorical take on conservatives being the real heroes of the civil rights movement in National Review.

Among Williamson's odd omissions was not mentioning the misty eyed defense of white supremacy National Review founder William F. Buckley penned in 1957. (He also ignores Buckley's view that the Civil Rights Act was "artificially deduced from the Commerce Clause of the Constitution or from the 14th Amendment.") That many liberal Republicans supported civil rights, and many racist Democrats didn't, doesn't alter the fact that the modern conservative movement really begins with a man who campaigned on opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Williamson hasn't responded to any of his critics at National Review, but he did offer this up on Twitter:

"WFB's views have been endlessly documented. I have nothing to add."

Williamson has "nothing to add" to the historical evidence that debunks his argument. I supposed I wouldn't have "anything to add" either, but I'm wondering how that conversation went with National Review's editors.

NR Editor: Do you think maybe in this piece about conservatives being awesome at the time we should acknowledge what was actually written in this magazine in the 1950s and 60s?

Williamson: Well what do we have to add?

Williamson did offer a valiant Chewbacca defense of his piece as well:

Chait: "Why not get behind the next civil rights idea (gay marriage) now?" How about an all-African-American national referendum on that?

Man, listen: The expiration date on that "joke" is rapidly approaching.

Adam Serwer is filling in while Kevin is on vacation.

Did Obama Just Deliver Marriage Equality in Maryland?

Adam Serwer — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:55:32 +0000

Polls taken since President Obama expressed support for same-sex marriage have shown an astonishing shift in black support on marriage equality. The shift in Maryland is so dramatic that the state may become the first state to actually uphold same-marriage rights in a referendum.

Here's the gist, from Public Policy Polling:

57% of Maryland voters say they’re likely to vote for the new marriage law this fall, compared to only 37% who are opposed. That 20 point margin of passage represents a 12 point shift from an identical PPP survey in early March, which found it ahead by a closer 52/44 margin.

The movement over the last two months can be explained almost entirely by a major shift in opinion about same-sex marriage among black voters. Previously 56% said they would vote against the new law with only 39% planning to uphold it. Those numbers have now almost completely flipped, with 55% of African Americans planning to vote for the law and only 36% now opposed.

These numbers are almost incredible, and if they hold up, they mean almost certain defeat for the National Organization for Marriage and the other conservative groups lining up to oppose same-sex marriage rights in Maryland. The Maryland legislature passed an equality bill earlier this year, but Maryland same-sex couples won't been able to marry until after the referendum—and even then only if they win. I'm generally very skeptical of the power of the bully pulpit, but I can't think of any other reason for this significant a shift than Obama's decision to come out in support of same-sex couples getting married.

Understand that exploiting the divide between socially conservative but religiously liberal minority groups and social liberals was the linchpin of NOM's strategy in Maryland, which is a very blue state with a large black population. NOM simply can't win without winning black voters, and Obama may have made that impossible. Instead of black voters torpedoeing marriage equality in Maryland, as NOM had hoped, they now stand poised to secure it.

Adam Serwer is filling in while Kevin is on vacation.

Mitt Fenced in on Immigration

Adam Serwer — Thu, 24 May 2012 14:31:33 +0000

When it comes to immigration policy, Mitt Romney has decided that discretion is the better part of valor. In his speech before Latino business leaders at the Chamber of Commerce Wednesday, Romney decided to avoid the whole immigration issue altogether, HuffPo's Elise Foley reports:

Romney's 20-minute speech mentioned higher education, District of Columbia schools and teachers' unions. Even though the address at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was specifically for members of the Latino Coalition, he barely discussed Hispanic-specific education issues -- other than a quick mention of former Republican Gov. Jeb Bush's efforts to raise reading scores of Hispanic students -- and entirely skipped undocumented students, whom a majority of Latino voters believe should get U.S. help in gaining legal status.

So what happened? Romney, after trashing his primary opponents from the right on immigration, and endorsing an immigration policy of "attrition through enforcement," attempted an awkward pivot to the center once the primary was over. Romney promised to "study" a plan offered by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) that would grant legal status to undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children. That didn't go over well with the anti-immigrant wing of the Republican Party, most notably Romney adviser Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state who helped write many of the nation's harshest state immigration laws. As the Washington Post's Greg Sargent reported, Kobach called the Rubio plan "amnesty," even though it wouldn't actually grant citizenship to anyone.

"I’d absolutely reject any proposal that would give a path to legal status for illegal aliens en masse," Kobach said. "That is what amnesty is. I do not expect [Romney] to propose or embrace amnesty."

Romney spent an awkward few days trying to distance himself from Kobach, demoting him from adviser to "supporter." Kobach nonchalantly told Think Progress that yes, he was still advising Romney on immigration, regardless of what the campaign itself was saying.

Although I'm sure immigration will come up again, the whole saga illustrates that the anti-immigrant wing of the Republican Party has Romney over a barrel. Romney can't move to the center because he simply cannot defy them, they won't let him.

Although Rubio, who spoke after Romney, mentioned his "DREAMless" Act in his speech Wednesday, an actual legislative proposal has been elusive. Romney's retreat on this issue really opens up an opportunity for the Obama administration, which is reportedly skittish about Rubio's plan. There's really no reason for Obama not to endorse it if and when it comes out. Not only will it make it impossible for Romney to take the opportunity Rubio is offering him, but there's little chance the legislation will pass because the GOP's anti-immigrant base wants to deport every single undocumented immigrant in America, making the Rubio plan a non-starter. Politically, the worst case scenario for the administration is that the proposal passes, and a group of undocumented immigrants who are American in all but name and are here through no fault of their own avoid being kicked out of the country. So it's not just politically smart—it's the right thing to do.

Better yet for the administration, the people who voted for Obama expecting comprehensive immigration reform rather than more than a million deportations would have an actual reason to vote for Obama other than fear of a Republican president. Obama has a large lead over Romney among Latinos, but the ratio of the Latino vote that Obama gets is less important than the number of Latinos who would have voted Obama but stay home out of disappointment with the administration.

Colin Powell Evolves on Same-Sex Marriage

Adam Serwer — Wed, 23 May 2012 22:15:28 +0000

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell tells CNN he's in favor of same-sex marriage, "either at the state or federal level":

"I respect the fact that many denominations have different points of view with respect to gay marriage and they can hold that in the sanctity in the place of their religion and not bless them or solemnize them," he said.

He said he has "a lot of friends who are individually gay but are in partnerships with loved ones, and they are as stable a family as my family is and they raise children. And so I don't see any reason not to say that they should be able to get married under the laws of their state or the laws of the country."

Powell's remarks hint at the importance of the closet in forestalling acceptance of gays and lesbians—as they became more visible as people, either on screen or in Americans' personal lives, the rationale for restricting their individual rights becomes more and more inscrutable (few people have written on this as eloquently as Andrew Sullivan). That's why preventing the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell was so important to the anti-gay rights cause: It's hard enough to maintain opposition to marriage equality when you know someone who is gay, but it's even harder when it means people possibly losing their lives in combat and leaving behind families the law arbitrarily fails to recognize as legitimate.

In 1993, during the first fight over DADT, Powell argued that discriminating against gays and lesbians in uniform was entirely unlike discrimination on the basis of race. Powell called skin color a "benign, nonbehavioral characteristic," that wasn't comparable to sexual orientation. When President Harry Truman desegregated the military, of course, many Americans felt being black was neither 'benign" nor "nonbehavioral"—they felt being black came along with a set of immutable character deficiencies that would harm the military. Years later, many Americans felt the same way about gays and lesbians.

Powell famously changed his mind about DADT and desegregation during the debate over repeal. In just ten years, Powell went from arguing that servicemembers should stay in the closet to supporting the rights of same-sex couples to marry. That evolution is in some ways even more dramatic than President Obama's, given that many conservatives and liberals regarded the president's opposition to marriage equality as insincere. Powell's evolution also looks much more like the one the country itself is going through—an evolution that seems more inevitable every day.

Adam Serwer is filling in while Kevin is on vacation.

Many "Pro-Life" Americans Don't Want to Outlaw Abortion

Adam Serwer — Wed, 23 May 2012 15:50:56 +0000

The big exciting news for Republicans in the latest Gallup poll on abortion is that more Americans identify as "pro-life" and fewer identify as "pro-choice" than ever. Although that's probably not meaningless, Americans' views on whether abortion should be legal haven't actually changed at all.

Here's the carefully written lede from Life News: "A new Gallup survey out today finds the percentage of Americans who identify themselves as supporting legalized abortion has dropped to a record low." It's true that the pro-life movement sees itself as opposing all forms of legalized abortion and 50 percent of Americans now identify as pro-life. But when you look at what the poll results actually say, it's clear Americans' feelings about abortion being legal are much more complicated:

Since 2001, at least half of Americans have consistently chosen the middle position, saying abortion should be legal under certain circumstances, and the 52% saying this today is similar to the 50% in May 2011. The 25% currently wanting abortion to be legal in all cases and the 20% in favor of making it illegal in all cases are also similar to last year's findings.

So a large majority—77 percent—of Americans support abortion being legal in all or "certain circumstances," and just 20 percent of Americans are actually "pro-life" in the sense that opponents of legalized abortion understand the term. Another way of saying this is that most Americans are actually pro-choice even if they sometimes identify as pro-life. In fact, there are more Americans who think abortion should be legal in all circumstances (25 percent) than think it should be illegal in all circumstances (20 percent).

That's good news for someone, but not for people who want to outlaw abortion.

Adam Serwer is filling in while Kevin is on vacation.

Conservatives Trying to Rewrite the History of Civil Rights

Adam Serwer — Wed, 23 May 2012 15:38:19 +0000

I can't recommend enough Jonathan Chait's rebuttal to National Review's attempt to rewrite the history of the civil rights movement to portray conservatives as its most ardent supporters:

It is true that most Republicans in 1964 held vastly more liberal positions on civil rights than Goldwater. This strikes [Kevin Williamson, the author of the National Review piece] as proof of the idiosyncratic and isolated quality of Goldwater's civil rights stance. What it actually shows is that conservatives had not yet gained control of the Republican Party.

But conservative Republicans — those represented politically by Goldwater, and intellectually by William F. Buckley and National Review — did oppose the civil rights movement. Buckley wrote frankly about his endorsement of white supremacy: "the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically." More often conservatives argued on grounds of states' rights, or freedom of property, or that civil rights leaders were annoying hypocrites, or that they had undermined respect for the law.

What Chait doesn't say is that Buckley's editorial wasn't just an endorsement of white supremacy, it was an endorsement of vigilante violence, tacitly if not explicitly supported by local authorities, in pursuit of enforcing white supremacy. Elsewhere in the piece, Buckley writes, "sometimes the numberical minority [whites] cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of violence." As long as it's up to them.

Amazingly, nowhere in Kevin Williamson's piece does he attempt to reckon with this piece of National Review's legacy, even as he puts forth a revisionist history of the civil rights movement in which conservatives are its most ardent supporters. Buckley, and his declaration of solidarity with Southern white supremacy, is entirely unmentioned. Instead, Williamson adopts the usual sleight of hand Republicans deploy here, using the sort of liberal Northeastern Republicans who have since been purged from the GOP to argue that the civil rights movement was a conservative accomplishment. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 couldn't have passed without Republican votes, but few if any of the Republicans who voted for it could survive a primary challenge today. That Republican votes were necessary for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 doesn't change the fact that the conservative movement was ardently opposed to it.

The clearest evidence of this legacy is the current Republican Party. The priorities of today's GOP include rolling back the very civil rights accomplishments Williams wants to take credit for. A Republican-appointee-dominated Supreme Court has all but begged for another opportunity to overturn the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and Republican-led states are falling over themselves trying to put a case in front of them. The Bush administration flooded the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department with Republican partisans, and civil rights enforcement fell almost across the board. The GOP has since engaged in a campaign to delegitimize the entire Civil Rights Division as a font of anti-white racism. When America was rocked by the economic crisis in 2008, Republicans flocked to the explanation that decades-old laws preventing racial discrimination in lending were responsible.

Say that this opposition is all about an ideological commitment to decentralization and federalism, and has nothing to do with race. Fine: But even in unicorn-land where political views are entirely unshaped by history and culture, that philosophy is against the concept of a strong federal government that uses its powers to secure the rights of individuals even when local authorities disagree. In other words, it stands in direct opposition to what Martin Luther King Jr. and his allies were trying to accomplish, and except where gun rights are involved, it remains the prevailing ideological disposition of the modern Republican Party and the conservative movement that dominates it.

Adam Serwer is filling in while Kevin is on vacation.

Bin Laden Filmmakers Got "Unprecedented Access" to National Security Officials

Adam Serwer — Wed, 23 May 2012 13:40:44 +0000

Top Obama administration officials provided details about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden to filmmakers working on a movie about the operation even as the White House was trying to keep those same details out of the media, Bloomberg reports:

The Obama administration promised a Hollywood filmmaker unprecedented access to the top-secret Navy unit that killed Osama bin Laden to help her make a feature film on the operation at the same time it was publicly ordering officials to stop talking about the raid.

The Pentagon’s top intelligence official, Michael Vickers, offered Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow interviews with a member of the SEAL team that helped plan last year’s assault on bin Laden’s compound, according to a transcript of a July 15 meeting that was released yesterday by Judicial Watch, a Washington-based legal organization.

This reflects an ongoing double-standard in how the Obama administration handles information related to national security. This White House is certainly not the first to leak sensitive information with the intention of shaping the media narrative (see Iraq War, the). But the Obama team's highly selective release of information has been paired with an unusually aggressive pursuit of leakers. The current administration has pursued more leak investigations than all previous administrations combined, including several against individuals who were clearly acting in the public interest.

When the government gets involved in a film like this one, it has a great deal of power to shape how the film comes out. The Obama administration is understandably concerned about how this story is told, since it will likely play a significant role in shaping the legacy of the man currently in office. But there's still something grating and profoundly hypocritical about the discrepancy between how whistleblowers are treated compared to those "authorized" to leak such information.

When the White House is shaping how a story is told, inconvenient information almost invariably gets downplayed or left out. I hope the final film will include at least some acknowledgement of the Pakistani doctor who was just sentenced to thirty years in prison for treason for allegedly helping the CIA locate bin Laden.

Adam Serwer is filling in while Kevin is on vacation.

Obama in 2008: Not That Positive

Adam Serwer — Tue, 22 May 2012 22:21:57 +0000

Slate's Dave Weigel offers an important corrective for the amenesia about Obama's supposedly positive 2008 campaign:

The myth that Obama ran a Different Kind of Campaign is based on a few bold bets -- like rejecting an early summer gas tax holiday -- that paid off. But we're also talking about a campaign that completely fabricated an anti-NAFTA position, and a campaign that tipped off Ben Smith to the haircut that destroyed John Edwards.* We're talking about a campaign that outspent John McCain by as much as a 3-1 ratio in the final stretch, and devoted most of that money to negative ads. The "hope and change" campaign was the happy cover on a dogged, overwhelming attack campaign. It used to benefit Democrats to obscure this; now, it benefits Republicans.

The most memorable negative ad the Obama campaign ran was the "fundamentals" ad, which mocked Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) saying "fundamentals of our economy are strong" and was apparently cut the afternoon of the day McCain said it. There are a lot of contrasts between 2008 and 2012, but a willingness to go negative isn't one of them. Journalists hyping Obama "going negative" this time around are probably just reacting to the fact that the president faces a much closer election than he did four years ago.

Adam Serwer is filling in while Kevin is on vacation.

Is One Superhero's Same-Sex Marriage an Existential Threat to Comic Book Marriages?

Adam Serwer — Tue, 22 May 2012 20:47:50 +0000

Marvel Comics' Northstar, a French-Candian superhero who came out as gay in the 1990s, is getting married to his longtime boyfriend Kyle. Jill Pantozzi at The Mary Sue explains:

In a press release Axel Alonso, Marvel Editor in Chief, said, "The Marvel Universe has always reflected the world outside your window, so we strive to make sure our characters, relationships and stories are grounded in that reality. We've been working on this story for over a year to ensure Northstar and Kyle’s wedding reflects Marvel's 'world outside your window' tradition."

Judging by the images, Northstar and Kyle appear to be getting married in New York, which legalized same-sex marriage last year. Popular culture has played a significant role in humanizing gays and lesbians to straight audiences—Vice President Joe Biden literally (literally) cited the NBC sitcom Will & Grace as contributing to his "evolution" on the issue of same-sex marriage.

Like many other subcultures, comic book geeks can veer from the open-minded to the distressingly homophobic. Marvel rival DC Comics will soon be letting one of its established characters out of the closet, which for the reasons Alyssa Rosenberg outlines here seems much more risky than a same-sex wedding. Marrying off Northstar, who's long been understood to be gay, is different from altering an existing character. Comic book geeks, you must understand, are frequently possessing of a Burkean reverance for tradition. Same-sex marriage is no big deal, but a writer who changes the color of Superman's costume could get burned in effigy.

Given how some corners of the conservative media reacted to Marvel introducing a black, Latino Spider-Man last year, we can probably expect some culture war rage over this latest attempt to warp the minds of children into thinking that gays and lesbians are people. But take heart, anti-marriage equality conservatives! Comic book marriages tend to be doomed, because happily ever after doesn't work out so well when you have to keep writing new adventures every week. Between telepathic affairs, space-time continuum altering Faustian bargains, homicidal rage, and plain old continuity reboots, Northstar's straight colleagues face existential threats to their unions that are far more serious than a gay superhero getting hitched. Those existential threats are a lot like the "existential threat" marriage equality supposedly poses to "traditional marriage" in that they're also entirely fictional.

Adam Serwer is filling in while Kevin is on vacation.

Leave Private Equity Aloooone!

Adam Serwer — Tue, 22 May 2012 16:45:33 +0000

Cory Booker's not alone. A number of other Democrats are criticizing the Obama campaign's decision to attack Mitt Romney for his work at the private equity firm Bain Capital. Here's former Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford:

"Private equity is not a bad thing," Ford said. "As a matter of fact, private equity is a good thing in many, many instances."

Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell called the attack on Bain "disappointing":

"I think they’re very disappointing," Rendell said of the ads attacking Bain. "I think Bain is fair game, because Romney has made it fair game. But I think how you examine it, the tone, what you say, is important as well."

So what's going on here? It seems to be a pretty straightforward case of Democrats not wanting to bite the hands that feed them. Josh Israel at Thinkprogress writes that Booker's first mayoral campaign received large contributions from people who work for Bain and the financial services industry. Ford got Bain money, too—the firm is listed on Open Secrets as his sixth-largest contributor in 2006 cycle. Rendell also received sizeable contributions from the financial services industry. Overall, as my colleague Asawin Suebsaeng noted months ago, Bain Capital's employees have given more to Democrats than Republicans. (Obama himself received a good chunk of change from Bain employees.)

Demonizing entire professsions is part of politics in the United States. Just ask a trial lawyer, a community organizer, or a Harvard professor. No one is above criticism obviously, but there's something bizarre about watching high-profile Democrats wring their hands over criticism of private equity, particularly given the beating teachers and other public workers have received over the past three years for their alleged "greed." Despite the alarming level of sensitivity over the feelings of financial services executives, private equity isn't going anywhere, particularly not when the industry can afford to have such ardent defenders in both parties.

Adam Serwer is filling in while Kevin is on vacation.

The American Race War That's Not Happening

Adam Serwer — Tue, 22 May 2012 14:21:34 +0000

Buzzfeed's McKay* Coppins published a story on Sunday about the Obama-inspired race war being waged against whites by legions of uppity Negroes. In paragraph 23, Coppins explains it's all a myth:

Indeed, the irony of the race war narrative's latest flare-up is that it comes at a time when national crime rates have reached historic lows — including reported hate crimes against whites. According to a report released by the FBI, there were 575 anti-white bias crimes reported in 2010 — up slightly from the 545 reported in 2009, but distinctly lower than the 716 reported in 2008. Overall, the past decade has seen a downward trend in anti-white bias crime. What's more, hate crimes against blacks have continued to outstrip those against whites by about four-to-one: In 2010 alone, there were 2,201 reported. Violent crimes across the spectrum reached a four-decade low in 2010.

As Coppins writes, the conservative "race war" narrative is largely about flooding the zone with stories of white persecution in order to blunt liberals' charges of racism, which conservatives believe are unfair. That strategy, in and of itself, reflects the conservative view that racism against minorities is largely nonexistent; that disparities in wealth, employment, and education are simply manifestations of self-perpetuating discrepancies in human capital; and that the only reason anyone ever brings up race or racism is as a political weapon. Moreover, the notion that explicit racial violence is the only accurate barometer for bigotry ignores the uncountable ways institutional prejudice can sustain itself without explicit violence. Even if hate crimes in 2010 were slightly higher in 2008 instead of being lower, that wouldn't alter the fact that more young black men were "randomly" stopped and frisked in New York City than there are young black men in New York City.

The more disturbing implications of the newfound conservative focus on "black-on-white violence" is the idea that allowing black people to rise to positions of authority places white people in physical danger. Or as Rush Limbaugh so concisely put it, "[I]n Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering." (We can assume an exception for allowing Republican African-Americans to rise to positions of power. As Ann Coulter put it, "Our blacks are so much better than their blacks.")

The conservative race war argument—that if "those people" get something, you're going to lose, or perhaps even get beaten up—is well-suited for a world of budget cuts and public-sector layoffs. The smaller the pie, the more hostile people get to the idea of sharing, particularly with those who are "undeserving." It also helps explain why some people might have thought that now-disavowed ad tying Barack Obama to Jeremiah Wright was a good idea. If you're working back from a predetermined conclusion that the Obama agenda is the product of anti-white racism, you're primed for the ad's explanation that Wright is responsible for a still-sluggish economy.

*An earlier version of this post mispelled McKay Coppins' first name.

Adam Serwer is filling in while Kevin is on vacation.

Our Awesome, Totally Effective, Non-Good Guy Killing Drones Are a Secret

Adam Serwer — Tue, 22 May 2012 13:09:23 +0000

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in February seeking records pertaining to the legal basis for the Central Intelligence Agency use of its deadly flying robots. On Monday, government lawyers filed a response brief, which says the agency won't acknowledge whether the drone records exist because they're secret:

Regardless of whether plaintiffs seek records of any CIA involvement or intelligence interest in U.S. drone strikes generally, or the alleged use of drones by the CIA specifically, or both, the district court properly held that plaintiffs failed to establish official disclosure by the CIA of the existence of any records that would be responsive to such request and that the CIA therefore is not prevented from providing a Glomar response. Instead of citing any direct statements to that effect by an authorized official, plaintiffs rely on vague and ambiguous statements by former CIA Director Leon Panetta and President Obama, none of which expressly acknowledges the information that plaintiffs seek here: that the CIA possesses responsive records relating to drone strikes.

Plaintiffs alternatively suggest that such an official disclosure may be inferred from those statements, particularly if those statements are considered in the context of media reports and statements by other government officials, which purportedly acknowledge the CIA’s involvement in drone strikes. But an official disclosure cannot be premised on speculation or inference by the public or media, or on statements made by unauthorized or unofficial government sources.

In early May, White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan gave a speech in which he acknowledged the existence of the targeted killing program, defended it as legal, and argued that it almost always only kills bad guys. So the CIA's argument here is: Just because a high-ranking public official gives a speech explaining how awesome and effective the targeted killing program is doesn't mean the program's existence isn't a secret. It's a state secret despite the fact the White House likes bragging about it.

Adam Serwer is filling in while Kevin is on vacation.

The NAACP's Evolution on Same-Sex Marriage

Adam Serwer — Mon, 21 May 2012 15:12:06 +0000

The national board of the NAACP, America's oldest civil rights organization, officially endorsed same-sex marriage rights Saturday after a vote in which only two members dissented. Although it may seem like the NAACP was conveniently following President Barack Obama's lead, the group's decision was a long time coming, and reflects an internal evolution that began years ago.

During the fight over Proposition 8 in California, the state chapter of the NAACP actively fought on the side of gay-rights organizations, seeking to increase opposition to the anti-marriage equality measure in the black community. That move wasn't without controversy. NAACP President Ben Jealous, whose brother is gay, traveled to California to help fill a fundraising gap after several donors protested the San Francisco chapter's support of LGBT rights, and shortly afterwards Jealous was among those who pushed the national office to oppose California's ban on same-sex marriage. Local NAACP chapters fought against the recently passed same-sex marriage and civil union ban in North Carolina, and supported legalizing same-sex marriage in Maryland. The head of the Iowa-Nebraska NAACP, Rev. Keith Ratliff Sr., has probably been the most vocal opponent of the NAACP's evolution on gay rights, but he seems to be in the minority—there were just two no-votes out of 64 board members. Former NAACP Chairman Julian Bond has been a vocal supporter of same-sex marriage rights for years, even before stepping down in 2010.

The NAACP isn't as influential as it once was, but part of its lingering power comes from the fact that religious leaders comprise a non-trivial percentage of its national and local leadership. Some of those leaders may continue to speak out against the organization's decision on marriage equality. But the NAACP's endorsement could also help smooth over confusion or frustration among black voters over Obama's decision to support the idea of same-sex couples getting married. As the Washington Post's Jonathan Capeheart suggests, because Obama is the most admired black political leader in the country, his endorsement of same-sex marriage is already paying dividends by providing other black leaders and institutions cover to do so as well.

Media coverage of the black community and LGBT rights issues has also frequently put black folks on one side of the equation and LGBT rights activists on the other. Support for LGBT rights from established black institutions like the NAACP should help break down that false binary, and help reduce the invisibility of black LGBT rights activists who have often been frustrated by a frame that implicitly cuts black gays and lesbians out of the story.

Adam Serwer is filling in while Kevin is on vacation.

Unmasking the Bundlers

Adam Serwer — Mon, 21 May 2012 14:11:00 +0000

The Obama campaign discloses its "bundlers," that is, fundraisers who help the campaign collect large amounts of money from many different donors. The Romney campaign doesn't. As my colleague Andrew Kroll reports, that work is left outside watchdog groups like the Public Campaign Action Fund that try to figure out who is raising money for Romney:

A new analysis by the Public Campaign Action Fund finds that at least 25 lobbyists have bundled $3,065,126 for Romney's campaign. Those lobbyists including Patrick Durkin of Barclay's Financial who's bundled $927,160, Ignacio Sanchez of the powerful law firm DLA Piper who's bundled $84,200, and Bruce Gates of tobacco company Altria Client Services who's bundled $27,500.

As Public Campaign's Adam Smith notes, two of Romney's bundlers have reached the campaign's "Stars" level and one has reached the "Stripes" level. That's Romney campaign lingo (PDF) for the two most elite levels for fundraisers, each of which give the fundraiser inside access to the campaign, an invitation to a June Romney finance committee retreat in Park City, Utah, and VIP access at the GOP convention this summer.

This seems a gaping hole in campaign finance law that ought to be fixed and made compulsory. The Obama campaign has already returned more than $200,000 in donations from two brothers of a fugitive who was convicted on fraud and drug charges, and as Kroll points out, several Obama bundlers have been identified as unofficial lobbyists. It's possible that none of that would have been disclosed without the Obama campaign willingly releasing the names of its bundlers. Yet Romney still refuses to release the names of his most important fundraisers. It seems rather strange that this isn't a bigger deal.

Adam Serwer is filling in while Kevin is on vacation.

Cory Booker Thinks Obama's Attacks on Bain Are "Nauseating."

Adam Serwer — Mon, 21 May 2012 13:34:35 +0000

In case you're wondering whether it's a slow news Monday, the big news to come out of the Sunday shows last weekend was Newark Mayor Cory Booker saying on Meet The Press that he found the Obama campaign's focus on Mitt Romney's record at the private equity firm Bain Capital particularly "nauseating." That's sort of awkward, because at least theoretically Booker is supposed to be supporting Obama:

But the last point I'll make is this kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides. It's nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough. Stop attacking private equity, stop attacking Jeremiah Wright. This stuff has got to stop because what it does is it undermines, to me, what this country should be focused on. It's a distraction from the real issues. It's either going to be a small campaign about this crap or it's going to be a big campaign, in my opinion, about the issues that the American public cares about.

Booker later released a YouTube video trying to walk the statement back.

"Mitt Romney has made his business record a centerpiece of his campaign," Booker said in the video. "He's talked about himself as a job creator. And therefore, it is reasonable, and in fact I encourage it, for the Obama campaign to examine that record and to discuss it."

Booker's reasoning is odd since the Obama campaign is directly attacking Romney's record at Bain while the proposed Wright ad was associated with a pro-Romney Super-PAC. The premise behind the ad was that Obama's presidency has been an act of revenge against white people stemming from the hatred Obama absorbed at Wright's church. It's hard to see the two as comparable, because Obama is directly responsible for the Bain attacks and Romney is not directly responsible for the Wright proposal. On the other hand, criticizing Romney's business record is far more justifiable than the deranged premise of the Wright ad.

This isn't the worst example of disloyalty or veering off message, but if you're a Democrat who finds it "nauseating" to even discuss how some people end up needing the social safety net, you may be in the wrong party.

Adam Serwer is filling in while Kevin is on vacation.

Friday Cat Blogging — 18 May 2012

Adam Serwer — Fri, 18 May 2012 19:58:29 +0000

So I know you guys are probably missing Inkblot and Domino, but fortunately I have a few cat pictures for you. At the moment I live in a house with four fat orange cats I affectionately refer to as a "herd of Garfields" for reasons that will become immediately obvious below.

Here's Burns and Pumpkin falling asleep in a sunbeam:

And here's Pumpkin again, dressed up in his Sunday best (slightly Instagrammed):

I hope you guys can be okay with these until Kevin gets back. See you next week.

Adam Serwer is filling in while Kevin is on vacation.

Obama Love Letter Truthers

Adam Serwer — Fri, 18 May 2012 19:00:51 +0000

Slate's Dave Weigel checks in on Jack Cashill, the conservative writer who intiated the conspiracy theory that Bill Ayers actually wrote Barack Obama's autobiography, and finds Cashill in disbelief over mid-20s love letters Obama wrote to a girlfriend that were uncovered by David Maraniss:

[W]riting longhand, presumably from memory, Obama has the wherewithal to put an umlaut over the “u” in Münzer. In college, I was an Honors English student and a Classics minor, not a political science major like Obama. I had not even heard of Münzer before reading this letter.

That Obama could embark upon a sophisticated, spontaneous discussion of T.S. Eliot – he claimed not to have read “The Waste Land” for a year and never bothered “to check all the footnotes” – should have alerted Maraniss.

So, Cashill's argument that Obama didn't write his book, or the letters, is that there's no way Obama is smarter than him. I wonder what makes him so certain about that?

My colleague Tim Murphy has more.

Reefer Madness in the Trayvon Case

Adam Serwer — Fri, 18 May 2012 17:01:11 +0000

Though the web headlines have been altered since, several news organizations (including Mother Jones) led their stories on Thursday's evidence dump in the Trayvon Martin shooting case with the revelation that Martin had small amounts of THC in his system.

This in itself is not all that surprising—Martin was suspended from school for possession of marijuana shortly before he was killed. The decision to lead with that information, however, suggests that it's somehow material to the guilt or innocence of George Zimmerman, and I'm puzzled as to why anyone would think that's the case. Here's National Review's Andrew McCarthy, who in response to a report from ABC seems to regard the news as fully exonerating Zimmerman:

The report neglects to mention that in the 911 tape, George Zimmerman reported to the police dispatcher that Martin seemed suspicious to him because it seemed Martin was "on drugs or something."

The report doesn't say Martin was high at the time, or how that would have justified the use of lethal force by Zimmerman, but McCarthy seems to believe the case is closed. McCarthy's reaction is indicative of the conversation surrounding the Martin killing, which has at times seemed less about the facts of the case and more about whether Martin was the type of scary black person Zimmerman would have been justified in fearing. There's a discomfiting parallel here with rape cases, where too often the facts are subsumed in a debate about whether the victim had it coming.

That Martin's exposure to marjiuana should be central to this argument, however, seems particularly absurd. The last three presidents of the United States have all but admitted to smoking marijuana, with George W. Bush demurring on the basis that admitting he had done so might set a bad example for children. This is not a drug that turns people into the Incredible Hulk.

Conservatives might respond that Zimmerman's personality is equally on trial, given that many liberals believe he racially profiled Martin prior to their confrontation. Zimmerman, however, is still alive to defend himself, both in a Florida court and in the court of public opinion. Martin is not.

Adam Serwer is filling in while Kevin is on vacation.

House GOP Kills Proposal to Block Indefinite Detention of US Citizens

Adam Serwer — Fri, 18 May 2012 14:12:16 +0000

At least it's on the record: Most House Republicans support the indefinite detention without trial of American citizens.

During Thursday's floor debate over the latest national defense authorization act, the House GOP brought out their long knives for Reps. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Justin Amash (R-Mich.), who, in their view, had collaborated on a nefarious plot to undermine national security. Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) accused the lawmakers of wanting to "coddle terrorists," while Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.) warned that under an amendment they'd introduced, "as soon as a member of Al Qaeda sets foot on US soil, they hear you have the right to remain silent." National Review's Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor who has never heard of a same-sex marriage supporting, pro-financial regulation liberal who wasn't secretly a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, wrote that their proposal was the result of "libertarian extremists" teaming up with liberals with an "obsession" with giving "more rights" to "mass murderers."

What exactly was the diabolical scheme Smith and Amash had proposed, which would lead to a Normandy-like invasion of Al Qaeda terrorists armed with Muslim Heat Vision and bent on taking advantage of America's adversarial court system? It was an amendment to the defense bill that says anyone arrested on American soil on suspicion of terrorism would get a fair trial in a civilian court, where their guilt would have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Last year's defense bill provoked a backlash, because Congress failed to establish clearly whether or not the president can lock up an American citizen without ever having to charge them with a crime. (The bill's detention provisions were just blocked by an Obama-appointed judge, in part because a government attorney couldn't answer the judge's question about whether a journalist reporting on a terrorist group could be indefinitely detained without trial.)

This time around, the line is absolutely clear. Smith and Amash proposed that the government actually has to prove you're guilty of a crime before depriving you of your liberty, something that the founding fathers found significant enough to write into the Constitution. Their opponents want the government to have the power to lock up American citizens without ever convicting them of anything, just because it says someone is a terrorist. Their proposal went down by a vote of 182-231, with only a handful of Republicans joining Amash in support.

As Smith pointed out during yesterday's floor debate, the Fifth Amendment says no "person" shall be deprived of liberty without due process of law. It doesn't say "citizen," and the text of the Constitution uses both words enough that it's clear the framers understood the difference. "Your beef is with James Madison," Smith told Thornberry on Thursday. So keep in mind, when Republicans like Rooney say that Smith and Amash want to "coddle terrorists," they're not necessarily talking about some heavily armed Al Qaeda fighter in Kandahar. They're potentially talking about you.

It's worth noting that only twice have suspected terrorists captured on American soil been shunted into military detention, and both times the individuals in question were transferred back into the criminal justice system because of fears the Supreme Court would declare such powers unconstitutional. Since then, federal courts and civilian authorities have easily handled terrorists, citizen or otherwise, from "Underwear Bomber" Umar Abdulmutallab to Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad. To underscore: the power to hold terror suspects captured in the US in military detention is of questionable constitutionality, has almost never been used, and confers no advantages either to incapacitating terrorists or gathering intelligence that civilian authorities don't already possess.

Republicans opposed to the Smith-Amash amendment proposed a hoax fix that "reaffirms" Americans' right to habeas corpus. Only the right to habeas was never in question, so their proposal doesn't actually do anything. It is a complete non-sequitur, a bad-faith attempt to prevent Smith and Amash from closing a gaping "terrorism exception" to Americans' due process rights. That amendment passed by almost the same overwhelming margin that the Smith-Amash amendment failed, by a vote of 243-173.

If nothing else however, it's illuminating to watch "small-government" Republicans—who have spent the last three years lamenting the loss of freedom caused by a higher marginal tax rate or the regulation of derivatives—defend the most arbitrary big government power imaginable.

The End Of White America

Adam Serwer — Thu, 17 May 2012 22:00:00 +0000

Thursday's New York Times had news sure to provoke demographic panic in some of the more unsavory corners of American society: the Census Bureau announced that non-white babies now account for the majority of births in the US. Here's the Times writeup:

Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 49.6 percent of all births in the 12-month period that ended last July, according to Census Bureau data made public on Thursday, while minorities — including Hispanics, blacks, Asians and those of mixed race — reached 50.4 percent, representing a majority for the first time in the country’s history.

Such a turn has been long expected, but no one was certain when the moment would arrive — signaling a milestone for a nation whose government was founded by white Europeans and has wrestled mightily with issues of race, from the days of slavery, through a civil war, bitter civil rights battles and, most recently, highly charged debates over efforts to restrict immigration.

While over all, whites will remain a majority for some time, the fact that a younger generation is being born in which minorities are the majority has broad implications for the country’s economy, its political life and its identity. "This is an important tipping point," said William H. Frey, the senior demographer at the Brookings Institution, describing the shift as a "transformation from a mostly white baby boomer culture to the more globalized multiethnic country that we are becoming."

I'm generally skeptical of stuff like this, because the definition of "white" has never been static. White ethnics—Irish, Italians, Jews—were long excluded from whiteness on the grounds that they were racially inferior, but they were integrated into a more inclusive redefinition of whiteness post-World War II. The same is likely to happen in the next generation—people that we don't consider to be white today might identify as such in the future.

Adam Serwer is filling in while Kevin is on vacation.

Would Mitt Romney Be the Most Right-Wing President Ever?

Adam Serwer — Thu, 17 May 2012 20:38:23 +0000

My former colleague Jamelle Bouie's cover story for the American Prospect suggests that if elected, Mitt Romney would be the most conservative president in recent memory:

These aren't idle expectations. If Romney wins the White House, it's a sure bet that Republicans will also win the Senate—Democrats are defending a disproportionately large number of seats this year—and maintain their majority in the House of Representatives. More important, Romney's agenda is almost entirely fiscal: cuts to taxes, cuts to entitlements, and cuts to domestic programs. All of this can be passed through budget reconciliation, which makes it immune to a filibuster. Republicans could force through their ideas without a single Democratic vote.

In terms of figuring out what you're actually voting for, it makes more sense to think about yourself as voting for a party rather than a candidate. That candidate will pursue the party's agenda within whatever objective structural constraints exist, meaning even if Barack Obama were the closet radical so many conservatives think he is, his policy agenda would still have been subject to the whims of Democratic centrists in the Senate.

If Mitt Romney wins, he'll likely be facing fewer of those constraints. The Democratic Party is a coalition of liberals and moderates. The Republican Party is currently dominated by conservatives. Obama had to tailor his policy preferences to appeal Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson to beat Republican filibusters, but it's unlikely Democrats will be able to act with the same ideological discipline that Republicans have displayed over the past few years.

Even so, Romney seems uniquely suited to fitting the "warm body" standard—that all Republicans need is a president ready to rubber-stamp whatever Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) comes up with—that Bouie refers to at the beginning of his piece. The best explanation I've seen for the two Romneys (The moderate Massachussetts governor and the conservative standard-bearer) comes from Reason's Peter Suderman, who compares Romney to a business consultant who views his task as "presenting the customer with a slicker, better packaged, but fundamentally unchanged version of itself." When the client was liberal Massachussetts, Romney was a moderate. As the leader of the post-Tea Party GOP, he will as conservative as his clients need him to be.

Adam Serwer is filling in while Kevin is on vacation.

How Toxic Was "The Ricketts Plan" on Jeremiah Wright? This Toxic.

Adam Serwer — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:10:44 +0000

On Thursday morning, the New York Times reported that a Republican super-PAC funded by wealthy conservative Joe Ricketts was considering a plan to turn Jeremiah Wright into Obama's running mate in the 2012 election. By early afternoon, the Ending Spending Action Fund was already repudiating "The Ricketts Plan" to defeat Obama. That was fast.

Here's the super-PAC's statement:

Joe Ricketts is a registered independent, a fiscal conservative, and an outspoken critic of the Obama Administration, but he is neither the author nor the funder of the so-called “Ricketts Plan” to defeat Mr. Obama that The New York Times wrote about this morning. Not only was this plan merely a proposal – one of several submitted to the Ending Spending Action Fund by third-party vendors – but it reflects an approach to politics that Mr. Ricketts rejects and it was never a plan to be accepted but only a suggestion for a direction to take. Mr. Ricketts intends to work hard to help elect a President this fall who shares his commitment to economic responsibility, but his efforts are and will continue to be focused entirely on questions of fiscal policy, not attacks that seek to divide us socially or culturally.

In America today, really overt bigotry is toxic. It just is. If you want to exploit bigotry effectively, you have to do so with some kind of plausible deniability, and in 2012 just getting a "extremely literate conservative African-American" to narrate your racist ad just won't cut it. It's not clear, though, that Ricketts understood this before the Romney campaign started trying to distance itself from the "The Ricketts Plan" on Thursday. The third page of "The Ricketts Plan," presumably referring to the airing of a hypothetical Wright ad during the 2008 election, states "If the nation had seen that ad, they'd never have elected Barack Obama." If the quote is accurate, and Ricketts thought a Wright ad would have changed the outcome of the 2008 election, it's hard to believe he never seriously considered running one this time around.

UPDATE: Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy emails my colleague Nick Baumann with a response to Ricketts' statement:

We have done a post on his statement, and will report further on this.... That said, they're not actually denying anything in our piece. We reported that it was a proposal awaiting final approval. And yes, we certainly stand by our reporting.

Adam Serwer is filling in while Kevin Drum is on vacation.

RIP Chuck Brown

Adam Serwer — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:21:06 +0000

Judging by my college experience, for folks outside of the DC area, Go-go music probably conjures images of mod dancers in high boots. Within DC, though, it refers to the city's predominant musical genre, pioneered by the incomparable Chuck Brown, known as the Godfather of Go-go, who died Wednesday. The Root's Natalie Hopkinson, who recently wrote a history of Go-go music, has a great retrospective on the social and cultural trends that birthed Go-go:

In the years that followed the uprising, Chuck would tell the kids more than just that. At a time when urban planners and policymakers ceded authority over inner-city Washington to the hustlers and the pimps, Chuck Brown showed kids how to play music. He showed them how to hype the audience through West African-style call and response, how to slow down ecstatic crowds to groove to the same sultry, slow-boiling conga beat. He showed them how to knit the audience into a community and to train them to come back, night after night, generation after generation.

Chuck taught D.C. natives to take those charred ruins of the civil rights movement in riot-blackened places like U Street and use them to make art. Not the kind of art that crosses over onto pop-music charts or that gets co-opted by multinational entertainment companies or even gets an NEA grant, but, nonetheless, the kind that generations of black Washingtonians have used for fellowship.

Despite the migration of DC residents south, either permanently or to historically black colleges and universities, Go-go never quite managed to make it beyond the DC metro area. Some artists tried—you can hear it's influence in a few nationally released tracks, like Jill Scott's "It's Love," Ludacris' "Pimpin' All Over the World," and of course Wale's "Pretty Girls," but it remains a DMV (DC-Maryland-Virginia) thing. There's really nothing on Earth like a go-go, and absent the immediacy of being there, hearing the music, and dancing to it maybe the genre's appeal just can't really be understood. I'll spare MoJo readers an account of my first time at a Go-go, but aside from his profound role in shaping the culture of the city, every semi-awkward dude in DC owes Brown a debt of gratitude for his contributions to a genre of music that tends to be less uh, labor-intensive for men.

Anyway, here's Chuck Brown's Bustin' Loose:

One of the great things about Go-go is bands doing covers of pop songs. This Rare Essence version of Ashlee Simpson's Pieces of Me is one of my favorites, just because it's weird.

Adam Serwer is filling in while Kevin Drum is on vacation.

Judge Blocks Enforcement of National Defense Authorization Act

Adam Serwer — Thu, 17 May 2012 13:59:09 +0000

Adam Serwer is filling in while Kevin Drum is on vacation.

On Wednesday, Obama-appointed(!) Judge Katherine B. Forrest blocked the section of last year's National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that purported to "reaffirm" the 2001 authorization to use military force against Al Qaeda. A group of activists and journalists had argued that the vague wording of the law could subject them to indefinite military detention because their work brings them into contact with people whom the US considers to be terrorists, and in doing so violated their First Amendment rights.

Forrest agreed with the plaintiffs that the relevant section of the law was "not merely an 'affirmation'" of the 2001 authorization for use of military force (AUMF). "Basic principles of legislative interpretation," she wrote, "require Congressional enactments to be given independent meaning"—judges can't simply assume a law does nothing. None of this brings the war on terror to a halt, mind you, because Forrest says there are "a variety of other statutes which can be utilized to detain those engaged in various levels of support of terrorists," so her injunction "does not divest the Government of its many other tools."

Forrest's logic is pretty sound: After all, there would have been no point to "reaffirming" the AUMF if doing so didn't expand the government's powers. Hawks in Congress wanted a "reaffirmation" to ensure groups like Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which didn't exist on 9/11, were covered under the 2001 law. The NDAA states in the "reaffirmation" section that people eligible for detention are those who have "substantially" supported Al Qaeda or any of its associated groups. The plaintiffs argued that section represented an expansion of existing governmental authority that could result in their detention.

Judge Forrest's decision, however, has to be read in the context of what happened in court: When Forrest asked the government lawyer charged with defending the statute whether the journalists, who said their work has brought them into contact with groups like Hamas or the Taliban, could be indefinitely detained, the government's lawyer wouldn't say:

JUDGE: Assume you were just an American citizen and you're reading the statute and you wanted to make sure you do not run afoul of it because you are a diligent U.S. citizen wanting to stay on the right side of [the law], and you read the phrase 'directly supported'. What does that mean to you?

GOVERNMENT: Again it has to be taken in the context of armed conflict informed by the laws of war.

JUDGE: That’s fine. Tell me what that means?

GOVERNMENT: I cannot offer a specific example. I don't have a specific example.

When asked again whether one of the journalists' activities would qualify as "substantial" support for a terrorist group, the government attorney said, "I don't know what she has been up to."

Asked direct questions about what might subject someone who wasn't actively engaging in hostilities to indefinite military detention, the official representative of the government responded with creepy Orwellianisms.

Congress had ample warning that the vagueness of "substantially supported" might make the NDAA vulnerable in court. Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson told the House Armed Services Committee in March that the language related to "substantial support" of terrorist groups "would give us litigation risk, without a doubt."

And what do you know? It did.