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.
Josh asks “why State?” of all departments, has such a fondness for contractors in general and Blackwater in particular. I’ve got two suggestions, one based on reality and one on my tinfoil hat.
First, if you look back at the battle between DOD and State in 2003–in which Bush had officially sided with Colin Powell on the approach to reconstruct Iraq, but in which DOD and OVP managed to at least undermine
According to Jill Simpson’s testimony, in January or February of 2005, Karl Rove met with the head of Public Integrity at DOJ and got him to assign resources to the Don Siegelman case.
A And so, anyway, he was telling me all of the things that Alice had done as far as having messed up the deal.
Or at least that’s one thing we might surmise from the news that Gonzales hired George Terwilliger to represent him just after he resigned (h/t bmaz).
No sooner did Alberto Gonzales resign as attorney general last monththan he retained a high-powered Washington criminal-defense lawyer torepresent him in continuing inquiries by Congress and the JusticeDepartment.
[snip]
The top concern for Gonzales, and now Terwilliger, is the expandinginvestigation by Glenn Fine, the Justice Department’s fiercelyindependent inspector
Via email, here are the roll call votes against the Forbes amendment (favoring immunity for Telcos) and for the RESTORE legislation.
Forbes:
No: Conyers, Berman, Boucher, Nadler, Scott, Watt,Lofgren, Jackson Lee, Waters, Delahunt, Wexler, Sanchez, Cohen, Sutton,Sherman, Baldwin, Weiner, Schiff, Davis, Wasserman Schultz, Ellison
Yes: Smith, Sensenbrenner, Coble, Goodlatte, Lungren, Cannon, Keller, Pence, Forbes, King, Feeney, Franks, Gohmert, Jordan
Final Passage
Yes:
Remember when Dick Cheney shot an old man in the face and then attempted to cover it up by reporting it through the local press? Well, Dan Bartlett wants you to know that that whole cover-up was Dick’s idea demand.
Then there was the time Cheney shot his pal during a hunting accident in Texas.”We couldn’t get hold of him for quite a bit of time,” Bartlett said.”They were strategizing on their
The NYT manages to understand that the Republicans went overboard with their attacks on Graeme Frost. But there’s something else they don’t seem to understand.
In recent days, Graeme and his family have been attacked byconservative bloggers and other critics of the Democrats’ plan toexpand the insurance program, known as S-chip.
[snip]
But Michelle Malkin, one of the bloggers who have stronglycriticized the Frosts, insisted Republicans should hold their groundand not pull punches.
In his post on the latest Bush exposure of counter-terrorism resources, Noah Schachtman links to this long profile on the woman and firm exposed by BushCo. Two things stick out from the article:
Taking two staff members from the Investigative Project, Katz set upher own office. She got by on small government contracts.
Via RawStory, I see that Bob Novak claims that Joe Wilson didn’t warn him strongly against outing Valerie in his column.
Columnist Robert Novak said Saturday Ambassador Joe Wilson did notforcefully object to the naming of his CIA operative wife, ValeriePlame Wilson, when Novak spoke to him prior to the publication of acolumn that sparked a federal investigation and sent White House aideI.
I happen to be reading Stonewall right now. And I gotta say, I’ve already said what Bernstein said several times.
Watergate would not have played out the same way today because Congressno longer performs its oversight role, said Carl Bernstein, one of thejournalists famous for uncovering the story.
“The difference with today is that the system did its job.
Elaine Chao (and her acting solicitor Jonathan Snare) must have spent a lot of time with Alberto Gonzales. Because she seems to be parroting him, in an attempt to refuse to comply with Congress’ oversight requests.
The Labor Department said Friday that it could cost millions of dollarsand take months to respond to a House committee’s subpoena looking atthe agency’s oversight of the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah, site of a fatal