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.
After a drawn out battle to liberate the records of the Fed’s discount window lending, they’ve finally been released. Bloomberg (who led the legal fight to liberate them) has made the records available here. While it’s going to take a while for those who understand this stuff to collate the data–the Fed released individual PDFs–thus […]
Apparently, the children in the GOP party in Florida are offended that a Democratic state Representative uttered the word “uterus” on the House floor: During last week’s discussion about a bill that would prohibit governments from deducting union dues from a worker’s paycheck, state Rep. Scott Randolph, D-Orlando, used his time during floor debate to […]
The Director of National Intelligence has floated a “shockingly bad” proposal on how much review GAO will be permitted within the intelligence community. According to Steven Aftergood, because the proposal defines the intelligence community broadly, it might result in the loss of GAO review in agencies like DOD and State. The Director of National Intelligence […]
I consider this a wicked brain teaser: The Obama administration is engaged in a fierce debate over whether to supply weapons to the rebels in Libya, senior officials said on Tuesday, with some fearful that providing arms would deepen American involvement in a civil war and that some fighters may have links to Al Qaeda. […]
As TPM first reported, MI’s institution of wingnut stupid, the Mackinac* Center, has FOIAed the labor studies departments of three universities. A free enterprise think tank in Michigan — backed by some of the biggest names in national conservative donor circles — has made a broad public records request to at least three in-state universities […]
NYT’s food columnist Mark Bittman has given up food: I stopped eating on Monday and joined around 4,000 other people in a fast to call attention to Congressional budget proposals that would make huge cuts in programs for the poor and hungry. By doing so, I surprised myself; after all, I eat for a living. […]
PJ Crowley has a very important Guardian piece on why he said the treatment of Bradley Manning was ridiculous, counterproductive, and stupid. After explaining that Manning, if convicted, “should spend a long, long time in prison,” and then claiming that the overall narrative of the State Department cables shows a story of “rightdoing,” he describes […]
Greg Mitchell has a preview of the Frontline piece on Bradley Manning today. He points out that the big “scoop” of the story–that Manning’s stepmother called the cops in 2006 after Bradley pulled out a knife during a family fight (but then immediately asked if his dad was okay). The entire story seems to look […]
I’m catching up today, so no substantive post yet. But in the meantime, I wanted to point to this AP piece, describing former Brazilian President Lula warning Portugal not to take the IMF bailout it’s about to be offered. “The IMF won’t resolve Portugal’s problem, like it didn’t solve Brazil’s,” Silva said late Monday during […]
In addition to what I laid out here, comparing the 2006 White Paper with the May 6, 2004 Goldsmith memo on the warrantless wiretap program made me realize that the White Paper relies more frequently on In re: Sealed Case than Goldsmith does, at least in the unredacted portions. By my count, the White Paper […]