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.
Yesterday, Tim DeChristopher was sentenced to 2 years and a $10,000 fine for his successful efforts to expose an improper BLM drilling auction. At his hearing, DeChristopher rebutted the prosecution’s claim that he needed to face a tough sentence to uphold rule of law. Mr. Huber also makes grand assumptions about my level of respect […]
Robert Chesney took a look at the Executive Order associated with the Administration’s roll-out of its Transnational Crime Organization program yesterday, which basically blocks the property of a group considered to be a TCO (note, in some places the Admin uses the acronym TOC; I agree with Chesney that TCO makes more sense and so […]
(This video documents a mother’s effort to get her son a Voter ID card in WI.) Good News for Kids McDonalds is rolling out new and improved Happy Meals, now with fruits or veggies and fewer fries. These Happier Meals will have 20% fewer calories. The NYPL has offered an amnesty on overdue fines; but […]
The Pew Research Center has a report showing not just the decline in net worth across demographic groups from 2005 to 2009, but more importantly, the relative net worth of those groups. It shows that, no matter how bad the $23,000 drop in net worth that the housing crash represented to whites, they’re still doing […]
Our Collapsing Empire Remember how much better Hillary was on trade than Obama in the primary? She gave a really depressing speech–talking up free trade–in Hong Kong today. Oh. Sorry. Bob Baer was only mostly serious when he said Israel would attack Iran in the fall. But who needs to attack Iran? After five Russian […]
John Brennan, Eric Holder, Janet Napolitano, and some other Administration bigwigs just rolled out the Administration’s new Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime (TOC). Here’s how they define TOC: Transnational organized crime refers to those self-perpetuating associations of individuals who operate transnationally for the purpose of obtaining power, influence, monetary and/or commercial gains, wholly or […]
The economist Milton Friedman, along with F. Hayek, is one of the villains of Naomi Klein’s book. According to her, Friedman has stated that “only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, […]
As you probably heard, two weeks ago, a guy named Rodrick Dantzler went on a killing spree here in Grand Rapids, shooting his wife and her family, and an ex-girlfriend and her family. He was reportedly bipolar and had a history of violence; four women–none of them among his victims–had gotten protection orders against him. […]
Your Daily Murdoch Tony Blair’s Attorney General–the guy who provided specious legal justification for the UK to go to war with us in Iraq–is catching some heat for not investigating the Murdoch hacking allegations more thoroughy. The Telegraph hired one of the big private intelligence companies, Kroll, to figure out who leaked details of a […]
Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri’s lawyers end their letter to Navy Vice Admiral Bruce MacDonald–who will decide whether al-Nashiri will face the death penalty–with an appeal to his role in deciding what we as a nation will condone: One pivotal and constant question has been–what shall we condone? Shall we condone a trial that allows evidence […]