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.
Apologies in advance. I’m going to be in the weeds reading the May 6, 2004 Goldsmith opinion for a little bit. In this post, I want to point to some details of timing that, I think, suggest that the changes DOJ made to Cheney’s illegal wiretap program in 2004 included, first, a limitation on collection […]
Last we heard about the families of Raymond Davis’ victims, they were held in custody until they agreed to accept the blood money Pakistan offered on our behalf. Things are looking up for the family members, though. Eighteen of them have been flown to UAE to be resettled. A chartered plane carrying 18 family members […]
As MadDog and I were discussing on this thread, the May 6, 2004 Jack Goldsmith opinion on the warrantless wiretap program references an OLC opinion that appears not to have been publicly released or, even in the course of FOIA, disclosed. Thus, this Office will typically construe a general statute, even one that is written […]
As Josh Gerstein and Jack Goldsmith note, DOJ just released two of the opinions underlying the warrantless wiretap programs. They both focus on the May 6, 2004 opinion Goldsmith wrote in the wake of the hospital confrontation; I’ll have far more to say about that opinion later today and/or tomorrow. But I wanted to look […]
Chris Smith co-sponsored HR 4, which would overturn the provision of health care reform that required all businesses to issue 1099 forms for goods and services in excess of $600. The whole point of the 1099 provision was designed to crack down on unreported business income. Given Smith’s support for overturning the provision, we have […]
I’m reading through the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s report on what it did last Congress. Among a number of interesting details, the report describes really really bad accounting at the National Security Agency (NSA). The report describes how the Intelligence Authorization Bill of 2002 required that our big intelligence agencies produce auditable financial statements […]
I’m busy watching this hearing today (and trying to watch one that happened last week). It’s hard to watch two hearings at once! But I didn’t want you think I was still celebrating St. Paddy’s Day, so for the moment I’ll direct you to this story, another example where DOJ is taking an unreasonable stance […]
I almost got distracted from working my yearly post around this picture of Mr. EW and I in Moneygall, taken back in 2008 when Brian Cowen was about to become Ireland’s Taoiseach and Barack O’Bama was about to officially get enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination to be President. But this very worthwhile Adam […]
The House Armed Services Committee is having a hearing on Law of War Detention. Much of it has focused on Jeh Johnson affirming that military commissions line up with American values. (In other words, it is fairly depressing.) But an interesting exchange happened when Hank Johnson had his turn. He set up his question by […]