Author Archive for: emptywheel
About emptywheel
Marcy Wheeler is an independent journalist writing about national security and civil liberties. She writes as emptywheel at her eponymous blog, publishes at outlets including Vice, Motherboard, the Nation, the Atlantic, Al Jazeera, and appears frequently on television and radio. She is the author of Anatomy of Deceit, a primer on the CIA leak investigation, and liveblogged the Scooter Libby trial.
Marcy has a PhD from the University of Michigan, where she researched the “feuilleton,” a short conversational newspaper form that has proven important in times of heightened censorship. Before and after her time in academics, Marcy provided documentation consulting for corporations in the auto, tech, and energy industries. She lives with her spouse in Grand Rapids, MI.
Entries by emptywheel
Jane Harman v. Jello Jay: Compare and Contrast
/19 Comments/in FISA, Intelligence/by emptywheelJane Harman explained her response to the warrantless wiretap program over at TPMCafe. I’m interested in it not so much to determine whether Eric Licthblau or she is right about whether she “switched her view” on the program (I think Harman is actually too sensitive to the charge; as she tells it, she did drastically change her view, but not because of the publicity of Lichtblau’s reporting, but because of the
The Thaw that Started Five Months Ago
/44 Comments/in 2008 Presidential Election, Foreign Policy/by emptywheelThe press is agog that Hillary and Richard Mellon Scaife made nice last week. But that peace-making follows five months after an earlier one between Bill Clinton and Richard Mellon Scaife. I’m not sure what that means, as far as Scaife’s motives (I presume the Clintons would just like his support, or, barring that, would like him to avoid funding a bunch of wingnut bloodhounds to sniff their panties and boxers). But it does suggest the thaw is much more than a one-off thing.
Not Even John Yoo Approved of the Illegal Wiretap Program
/129 Comments/in FISA, Unitary Executive/by emptywheelI do hope that Eric Lichtblau’s book gets enough coverage this week to further stall Jello Jay’s attempts to ram through telecom immunity. The excerpt in the NYT today reveals that when the illegal wiretap program started in 2001, it had no specific legal authorization–not even from the compliant John Yoo!
Robert S.