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.
Two MI County Registers of Deeds–Curtis Hertel of Ingham (Lansing’s county) and Nancy Hutchins of Branch–have filed a class action suit against MERS, seeking the taxes the banks should have been paying to counties and the state every time they transfer property, plus penalties. Plaintiffs are seeking money and punitive damages, tax penalties, costs, and […]
National Security Archive has an update on DOJ’s efforts to limit FOIA in the guise of transparency (or, potentially, simply admit what they’ve been doing for some time). It describes some of the other crummy things DOJ is trying to do (including describing online news as not-news). One of those is to introduce a loophole […]
Benjamin Wittes has been complaining that no one besides Lawfare’s writers is looking closely at the DC Circuit decision in Latif. Why has there been virtually no press coverage of the Latif decision? Other than this article on CNN’s web page, which actually ignores the aspect of the case that makes it jurisprudentially important, a […]
Marion Nestle describes that the USDA is cutting back on basic research. This decision, Neuman reports, “reflects a cold-blooded assessment of the economic usefulness”—translation: lack of political clout in the affected industry—of the 500 or so reports issued by the National Agriculture Statistics Service each year. I was struck, in particular, by this report on […]
There’s one more thing I’ve been trying to understand from the Sandusky presentment: How did the grand jury find the victims described in the presentment? For some of the victims, the answer is clear. The mother of Victim 1 (the boy who Sandusky met at his high school) for example, told his school and the […]
Let me avoid any confusion by stating that what follows is not meant to excuse Joe Paterno of any moral or legal duty. He could have stopped an alleged child predator and did not do so and he bears great moral responsibility for his inaction. With that said, though, I wanted to lay out what […]
On Wednesday, DOJ announced the sentencing of Carlos Mario Jimenez-Naranjo, one of the key leaders in Colombia’s AUC terrorist group, to 33 years in prison. Carlos Mario Jimenez-Naranjo, aka “Macaco,” a paramilitary leader and one of Colombia’s most notorious drug traffickers, has been sentenced to 33 years in prison by U.S. District Judge Joan A. […]
In September, I wrote about EFF’s efforts to find out whether Obama had an Intelligence Oversight Board–the board that’s supposed to provide some outside review over potential problems and abuses in the intelligence community. ODNI has finally responded to EFF’s FOIA lawsuit. And the results show a distinct lack of intelligence. Meaning, they’re kind of […]
DOJ has submitted its statement of issues it plans to appeal in the Jeff Sterling case. They are: (1) Whether the district court erred in finding that author James Risen was protected by a “reporter’s privilege” and, therefore, could not be compelled to testify at trial as to the identity of persons who unlawfully communicated […]
It pains me to defend John Rizzo. After all, his willful dumbness–or more likely, outright deceit–played a key role in our country’s approval of torture. Still, I have mixed feelings about investigating–and probably reprimanding, but not prosecuting–him. The Justice Department is investigating whether a former top U.S. intelligence official, John Rizzo, improperly disclosed classified information […]