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 and his reader ask WTF is up with Arlen’s support for Larry Craig.
TPM Reader BR wonders about Arlen: “What the hell isSpecter thinking? Is he trying to destroy the Republican party? Nothingcould be worse for them then drawing this out or attracting any furtherattention to the situation. Or did Specter offer friendly encouragementnot thinking Craig would take him seriously?
Okay, here’s the Karen DeYoung report I was so impatient for yesterday. She lays out mostly the changes that I found here, ThinkProgress found here, and NSN found here.
A bleak portrait of the political and security situation in Iraq released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office sparked sharp protests from the top U.S.
As I suspected, Judge Burns was none too impressed that Tommy K’s daughter bought Phillip Halpern’s long-lost uncle’s house with the ensuing benefit to Halpern of precisely nada.
Halpern, who had last seen his uncle in 1999, said in court papers hehad no knowledge of the deal and did not benefit in any way from it,and removing him or the office was not warranted.
On that matter, Burns agreed.
[Update: Here’s DeYoung’s take.]
So I’ve been holding my breath to see what Karen DeYoung and Tom Ricks had to say about today’s GAO report. After all, they were leaked the draft report last week, and they anticipated that BushCo might “soften” the report. Since there are clear signs the Administration did just that, I have been eagerly waiting for them to give us a catalog of the changes the Administration forced
I’m anxiously waiting the WaPo’s analysis of today’s GAO report. You’ll recall the WaPo reported last week that someone had liberated a copy of the GAO to prevent BushCO from “softening” its conclusions. But the numbers suggest that some of the conclusions were softened: whereas on Thursday, the WaPo reported Iraq had met three and partially met two of the benchmarks, the GAO has since added two more partially met objectives–on
Glenn highlighted a part of the Jeffrey Rosen on Jack Goldsmith article that I wanted to return to:
[Goldsmith] shared the White House’s concern that the Foreign IntelligenceSurveillance Act might prevent wiretaps on international calls involving terrorists.But Goldsmith deplored the way the White House tried to fix the problem, whichwas highly contemptuous of Congress and the courts.
Via CREW, I see Ed Gillespie making grand promises that the GOP will have a scandal-free election in 2008.
Ed Gillespie, President Bush’s counselor and a former chairman of theRepublican Party, acknowledged that ethical scandals have hurt the GOP.He predicted that by 2008, the party “will not have candidates who haveany kind of ethical considerations that will be a concern to thevoters.”
Like CREW, I’m not holding my breath that the GOP will
To bail out those poor, helpless little credit card companies? Well, it’s time to revoke it:
As subprime borrowers began to default on their mortgages in rapidlygrowing numbers this year, credit card issuers increased their effortsto sign up such customers with tarnished financial histories, accordingto a market research firm.
Direct mail credit card offers to subprime customers in the UnitedStates jumped 41 percent in the first half of this year, compared withthe first
And so the man who began a silent revolt against BushCo’s shredding of the Constitution begins to speak. The NYT has a long Magazine article on Jack Goldsmith reviewing the revolt and previewing Goldsmith’s book, due to come out on September 17. The article provides details we’ve known in sketchy form before–like how the key decisions, prior to Goldsmith’s arrival, were made by Cheney and Addington bypassing normal channels in the
If you haven’t already read Pat Lang on Bush’s surprise visit to Iraq today, do so now. For whatever PR value BushCo is trying to milk out of this visit (here’s C&L with coverage), Lang is persuasive that the chief reason for the visit is to bring his war cheerleaders together to develop a game plan for the next few weeks.