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.
The Great Orange Satan links to an article tracking Heather Wilson’s Senate campaign activities, suggesting that she’s angling to replace Domenici. Markos notes what the local bloggers don’t–that Domenici may actually be thinking of retiring to spend time with Karl Rove’s family.
An intriguing bit of intel from folks down in New Mexico:
She’s recently been in Clovis, Los Alamos and Las Cruces.
Anonymous Liberal is trying to sort through something I’ve been looking at for a while: to what degree was Ashcroft fully read into the warrantless wiretap program? I think there’s a two-part answer to this question. As I’ll show below, I think BushCo had Ashcroft approve the multiple aspects of “the program” in isolation from each other, giving him an incomplete picture of how the parts worked together.
This is a persnickety point, perhaps, but it’s so much more fun to bust Alberto Gonzales in one of his subtle evasions than one of his real blatant lies.
In his most recent appearance before the Senate Judiciary Commitee, Chuck Schumer asked Gonzales whether he knew that Comey had assumed the powers of Acting Attorney General–Schumer was trying to point out how totally inappropriate it was for Gonzales to go to
Shouldn’t Pat Leahy be back in Vermont tipping cows or something like that? Instead, he’s churning out letter after letter, closing in on the Bush lying thugs. Tuesday’s letter seemed to target Karl Rove. In today’s letter, Alberto Gonzales is clearly the target.
I am writing to ask that you investigate and evaluate potential misleading, evasive, or dishonest testimony by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales before the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 24,
Did you ever notice that if you take a log recording the events regarding an illegal surveillance program, and redact the heck out of it, it looks like a chronology that a dirty fucking hippy blogger might write? Below you can read what’s left of Mueller’s log, with my notes. The big takeaways are:Mueller refers to a “program,” singular.
I’m stuck between three gallons of canned tomatoes, a soon-to-be gallon of canned peaches, and a big pot of borscht. Which means I’m too hot to deal with the Padilla verdict yet. So instead I’m going to point out that my reading of Gonzales’ correction from a few weeks ago was correct.
The NYT has a funny article out about the involvement of bigtime Republican lawyer Roderick Hills in directing Chiquita to continue bribing a Colombian right wing militia even after the State Department listed the organization as a terrorist organization. I say funny, most of all, because Neil Lewis bills the competing narratives surrounding Hills’ actions as a “Rashomon-like set of narratives,” but Lewis really provides only one of those narratives–Hills’.
Rove’s bed is not even cold and already Ed Gillespie is crawling into it.
Now, with the departure of Karl Rove, the president’s closest adviser, Gillespie, 46, a former lobbyist and Republican National Committee chairman, has once again been asked to help fill the void.
White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Boltenhas said that he plans to divide Rove’s broad political andpolicymaking duties — and the 60 or so White House staffers
cboldt linked to Wired’s liveblog from the warrantless wiretap Appeals hearing that took place today in San Francisco. Go read it. It may make you cry. Repeatedly, the government lawyers appeal to arguments outside all human cognition to defend their wiretap program.
“Was a warrant obtained in this case?” Judge Pregerson asks.
In light of the weekend’s news that there were actually two FISC rulings against the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretap program, I’d like to return to this James Risen article from May 2.
Senior Bush administration officials told Congress on Tuesday thatthey could not pledge that the administration would continue to seekwarrants from a secret court for a domestic wiretapping program, as itagreed to do in January.Rather, they argued that the president had