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 WaPo notes with some curiosity that the business community did almost nothing to get the debt ceiling passed. It’s a remarkable story: perhaps unintentionally noting that while our banana republic status was being confirmed, the Chamber of Commerce was lobbying not to prevent that, but to get a Panama trade deal; describing a betrayed […]
My biggest complain about this statement from Raúl Grijalva is that he doesn’t say who threw Democrats and the people they champion under the bus: President Obama. That said, his comments about the crossroads facing the Democratic Party are spot on. This deal trades peoples’ livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals, […]
Kudos to Ezra for admitting he was dead wrong last year when imagining the Republicans might allow a deal that would let Bush tax cuts lapse. A year ago, I was less concerned about the Bush tax cuts. I assumed, as did many in Washington, that the Republicans’ antipathy to taxes was a negotiating stance. […]
I just watched a scintillating panel at the Aspen Security Forum. It featured former LAPD Chief Bill Bratton, Alberto Gonzales, ACLU’s Anthony Romero, John Yoo, and David Cole, moderated by Dahlia Lithwick. The panel itself was notable for the staging of it. The panelists were seated right next to each other, with no table in […]
bmaz is working on trash. Here’s a highlight of what I’ll be talking about. Justice and Injustice Two developments in the Thomas Drake case. First, Josh Gerstein has posted the excerpt from the transcript where Judge Richard Bennett laid into William Welch about the three year delay after raiding Drake’s house. Also, Steven Aftergood reports […]
The FBI’s WMD Center turned 5 on Tuesday and to celebrate, DOJ has released an interview with Dr. Vahid Majidi. (Part One, Part Two) The interview is not all that interesting. I’m much more interested in the list of WMD cases Majidi offers as the successes the Directorate has had in the last five years. […]
KagroX, who just got named one of Politico’s top tweeters yesterday, just asked this question: Has there ever been a populist movement cheering for default & austerity? We’ve seen default situations around the world, and austerity programs imposed as a result. But popular political movements in FAVOR of it? I replied, Wrong to describe as […]
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Here’s Melissa Harris-Perry talking about the Pew study on net worth from the other day. Our Dying Economy Nicholas Shaxson (the author of Treasure Islands) has a post on a probably-doomed attempt by developing countries to have more of a say over international […]
I long meant to do a piece looking at how the Japanese earthquake exposed the problems with our current supply chain. Matt Stoller has taken what happened after the earthquake as an opportunity to reflect on the possibility of systemic failure because our supply chain has been concentrated and outsourced. In the last few years, […]
Who knew that Detroit was so commodity-rich it was ruining entire segments of industry? Only, I presume Detroit gets little to none of the fortune Goldman is making by hoarding aluminum in warehouses in the city, thereby driving the price up and making millions on warehouse rent. This Reuters article describes the scam, but it […]