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.
I agree with Greg Sargent. It is depressing (though I find it unsurprising) that a majority of Democrats support drone strikes on American terrorist suspects overseas. The Post has just released some new polling that demonstrates very strong support for Obama’s counterterrorism policies, including 83 percent of Americans approving of his use of drone strikes […]
I haven’t had much time to cover the ins and outs of the foreclosure settlement, which has been genuinely imminent for two weeks, but which is faltering now on banks’ refusal to be sued for anything. My guess is that Eric Schneiderman’s indefinite delay of his presumed announcement that he was joining the settlement last […]
A funny thing happened when I wrote that I was excited that Trevor Thomas might run for the 3rd Congressional District because he was involved in one of the most exciting underdog victories progressives have had in recent years. A local Democratic activist (he’s known me for years but apparently hasn’t followed what I’ve been […]
I’ve always been skeptical of the Scary Car Broker Plot–the suit against a bunch of used car brokers and others based on the claim that the entire thing is a money laundering operation for Hezbollah. At the core of the complaint is the allegation that entities that weren’t listed on Treasury’s sanctions list until early […]
[youtube]kxw4uZAezaI[/youtube] When I first saw Crazy Pete Hoekstra’s racist ad, I thought the woman in it–who is supposed to depict a Chinese woman who speaks English well–looked more Thai or Laotian than Han Chinese. And while Hoekstra claims that her parents are “100% Chinese” there are unconfirmed reports that the actress is actually Laotian-American. Which […]
In a quote for a WaPo story on the Administration’s credibility problems on its Afghanistan claims, a senior Administration official complained that their Afghan plans got leaked before they wanted them to. There are people at every piece of this — the Taliban, Islamabad, Kabul and Washington” — who object to or are trying to […]
[youtube]pGMOhOYvcw4[/youtube] Once again, Chrysler had one of the best ads in yesterday’s Super Bowl, once again using the aesthetic of Detroit disaster porn to offer gritty inspiration. And while it’s not as good as the Eminem version last year, it might appeal to Chrysler’s target market even more, as it generalizes the uncertainty so many […]
Just interrupting pre-game to bring two pieces of interesting political news from MI. First, we might finally have exciting news in my congressional district, where the party has thus far failed to recruit anyone to run against the unpopular Justin Amash even after his own party put a target on his back by making the […]
In 1974, the NYT made history with a story that reported, An extensive investigation by the NYT has established that intelligence files on at least 10000 U.S. citizens were maintained by a special unit of the CIA In 2005, the NYT again made history by exposing illegal domestic wiretapping. Yet today’s NYT managed to publish […]
As you may have heard, Anonymous hacked into and released a conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard discussing their efforts to crack down on the hackers’ group. What makes the hack all the more ironic is its release comes just days after Robert Mueller bragged of the FBI’s cyber expertise at the Threat […]