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.
Via email from his spokesperson:
Wefully recognize that the Constitution provides that commutation decisions are a matter of presidential prerogative and we do not comment on the exercise of that prerogative.
We comment only on the statement in which the President termed the sentence imposed by the judge as “excessive.†The sentence in this case was imposed pursuant to the laws governing sentencings which occur every day throughout
Well, George did it. Made sure that Scooter wouldn’t flip rather than do jail time. He commuted Libby’s sentence, guaranteeing not only that Libby wouldn’t talk, but retaining Libby’s right to invoke the Fifth.
This amounts to nothing less than obstruction of justice.
Here’s Bush’s statement, in which a guy who is pushing to restore minimum sentencing laws says that Libby’s sentencing–which was the minimum according to the guidelines, was too tough:
Mr.
Holy Shit. Remember TALON and CIFA? Here’s a description I wrote in April:
It was designed to gather intelligenceon threats to defense installments in the United States–to try tocollect information (in the TALON database) on threatening peoplescoping out domestic bases. But it ended up focusing on peace activists and the lefty blogosphere’s own Jesus’ General.
Does it bother anyone that–at a time when Pakistan’s Interior Ministry is raising concerns about the Taliban taking over significant chunks of Pakistan, the father of Pakistan’s nuke program is on the loose? [Thanks to Mimikatz for the spelling correction.]
Authorities have eased the virtual house arrest imposed on A.Q. Khan,the disgraced scientist who sold Pakistan’s nuclear secrets to Iran,North Korea and Libya, officials said Monday.
[snip]
However, two senior government officials told the
Once upon a time in a land called Plameology, I was utterly obsessed with the CIA report on Joe Wilson’s trip. As I pointed out some time ago, the trip report, in addition to Valerie’s identity, was classified at the beginning of leak week. And as I pointed out over the weekend, it is crystal clear that Libby, at least, leaked material from this, knowing it was classified, with no claim
The Appeals Court decision not to grant Libby bond pending appeal, along with last week’s Cheney series, may well ensure that Libby does some jail time, however short.
Appellant has not shown that the appeal raises a substantial question.
I’m not holding my breath yet, mind you. But it’s going to have to be an untimely pardon or commutation …
McClatchy has a story that shows that Pat Rogers, one of the key players behind the firing of David Iglesias, was an officer in the voter fraud group American Center for Voting Rights.
Iglesias said he only recently learned of Rogers� involvement assecretary of the non-profit American Center for Voting RightsLegislative Fund – an activist group that defended tighter voteridentification requirements in court against charges that they weredesigned to hamper voting
I’d like to use the occasion of Al Gore’s op-ed in the NYT today to expand on something I said in my talk on Curbing the Imperial Presidency. In his book The Imperial Presidency, Arthur Schlesinger argued that the Imperial Presidency derived from foreign policy:
The Imperial Presidency was essentially the creation of foreign policy.
Frank Rich has a column out that means well–but repeats a Cheney talking point in a way that does more harm than good. He focuses on the connection between Bush’s revised Executive Order on classification and the CIA Leak argues that, when Bush gave Cheney classification authority equivalent to his own, he also gave him declassification authority equivalent to his own.
But few noticed another change inserted five times in the revised
Well, that’s probably hyperbole. But it does seem like things in Pakistan are getting pretty dire. So says a Pakistani report put together by its Interior Ministry, providing ominous warnings about the increasing power of the Taliban in the country.
The Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was warned this month that Islamic militants and Talibanfighters were rapidly spreading beyond the country’s lawless tribalareas and that without “swift and decisive action,†the growingmilitancy