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 HuffPo looks at how the Panama trade deal will just make it easier for rich Americans to dodge taxes. Bank of America may be insolvent and stealing homes from people, but the police still obey them, rather than Community Organizers, even when the Organizers catch BoA being a deadbeat. More than three times as […]
I’m all in favor of creative ways to solve the foreclosure crisis. But I don’t think this is answer. The government is soliciting ideas for ways to unload lots–big lots–of foreclosed properties currently owned by Fannie, Freddie, or FHA. The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), in consultation with the U.S. Department of the Treasury and […]
So Ron Bloom, Obama’s manufacturing czar and a key figure in the auto bailout, has announced he is leaving the White House to spend more time with his family. Today, the White House announced Ron Bloom will be stepping down from his position as the Assistant to the President for Manufacturing Policy at the end […]
This WSJ article–purporting to explain the difference between the 2008 crash from this crash (which is basically the extension of the earlier one)–is amusing for the way it avoids discussing the drop in real wages as the common cause for both crashes. For example, it doesn’t consider why people were using their home as an […]
Our Dying Economy Update: Reid just named his three picks for SuperCongress: Patty Murray, Max Baucus, and John Kerry. IMO, Kerry is actually a worse choice than Baucus (yeah, that’s me saying that), since Kerry was in favor of the 4T bargain but Baucus voted against the Catfood Commission recommendations. And frankly, we’re probably better […]
As I noted yesterday, the 7th Circuit has permitted a Bivens lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld to move forward. I wanted to turn to a dispute not resolved in the opinion, which should be: whether or not Rummy changed the Army Field Manual after the Detainee Treatment Act so as to permit ongoing use of torture. […]
This Politico story–“revealing” Obama’s campaign plan to brand Multiple Choice Mitt as “weird”–has gotten a lot of attention in the twittersphere. Barack Obama’s aides and advisers are preparing to center the president’s reelection campaign on a ferocious personal assault on Mitt Romney’s character and business background, a strategy grounded in the early stage expectation that […]
The 7th Circuit has just issued a decision in yet another case where a US citizen (actually, two of them–Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel) are suing Donald Rumsfeld for the torture they suffered at the hands of the military. (h/t scribe) The opinion allows the Bivens lawsuit to go forward. Vance and Ertel are both […]
Our Dying Economy Banks are slashing jobs. I guess giving all that free money to “job creators” didn’t work out the way it was supposed to. If Dodd-Frank could do what it was supposed to, the Feds would be busy resolving Bank of America right now–before the many suits, objections to settlements, and put-back claims […]
Particularly in light of the Administration’s recent rollout of its Transnational Criminal Organization program, the NYT’s article on our escalating war in Mexico raises several concerns. As I laid out, that program basically applies a number of GWOT tools–such as freezing of funds–to the fight against completely arbitrarily designated TCOs. The NYT article shows how […]