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.
When Goldman and Apuzzo exposed NYPD’s domestic spying program last week, NYPD insisted it didn’t exist. So this time, they’ve posted documentary proof. As they report, the domestic spying program employed a “Demographics Unit” that mapped out “ethnic hotspots” in the NY city area. The program, it seems, would not even (and, as I’ve noted, […]
This article–showing how many stupid projects have been funded in the name of homeland security in the last decade–has been making the rounds. Everyone has been pointing to its details on how few people have died in terrorist attacks. “The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe […]
Perhaps I’m getting tiresome with this point, but sorry, I’m going to make it again. Two months ago, David Plouffe dismissed the possibility that the unemployment rate would have any effect on Obama’s reelection chances. He (correctly) noted that people judged the President’s performance on the economy by their assessment of how the economy is […]
Mr. EW took this picture this weekend of a teeny frog living in a hole in a picnic table (that’s his index finger in the picture, giving you a sense of how small this fella was). While he doesn’t use the word “lie” (he lists “reasons to doubt Cheney’s version” and says it’s difficult to […]
I wanted to point to four different discussions as a way to situate a larger discussion of where the auto industry is at: This LAT story on how the auto rebound is driving what little recovery we’re having in the US NYT Magazine asking “Does America Need Manufacturing?” as it reviews the new battery plants […]
Brian Beutler has a post predicting that Eric Cantor will do the same thing with Irene disaster aid he did with hypothetical aid to his own constituents after the earthquake: demand budget cuts to pay for any aid. Now, in the wake of Hurricane Irene — a much costlier natural disaster — Cantor may make […]
We talk a lot about the decline of the rule of law on this blog: about how the MOTUs get away with torture, wiretapping, financial fraud, lying to Congress, ruining the environment, and the like. The problem, it seems, is that the government doesn’t want to prosecute anyone so laws aren’t taken very seriously. Apparently, […]
Mr. EW and McCaffrey the MilleniaLab and I are off for the weekend–apparently, with a horde of others who take their travel tips from Good Morning America, which voted Sleeping Bear Dunes the most beautiful place in the US. Between you and me, I’m also a big fan of Sedona and Grand Teton, which were […]
There’s an interesting passage in this government filing to get Judge Leonie Brinkema to reconsider her guidelines regarding James Risen’s testimony in the Jeffrey Sterling suit. It seems to address Brinkema’s suggestion in her ruling that there might be recordings of Sterling passing classified information to Risen. The government has not stated whether it has […]
As I noted last week, the VA earthquake last week happened in Eric Cantor’s district, just miles from a nuclear power plant. I reported then that the plant had lost power and switched to backup diesel generators. But it turns out that switchover didn’t happen without a hitch. One of four generators failed to start. […]