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.
Yves does a thorough smackdown on the departing Michael Barr’s description of all the things the government is going to get to the bottom of the foreclosure fraud problem, noting that the foreclosure task force simply isn’t investigating the problem in enough detail to understand, much less solve, the problem. But I wanted to look […]
As I noted, the Financial Stability Oversight Council is meeting today. As announced, they discussed foreclosure fraud and securitization. For less than 15 minutes. And then they moved on, without once raising the issue of whether or not the banks’ exposure due to securitization problems posed a systemic risk to our financial system. As the […]
You know how I mocked the White House for dismissing the problem of gate rape by saying only 170,000 passengers had had their genitalia groped by a stranger working for the government? I noted that their pushback was potentially inconsistent. According to “administration officials,” just half of one percent of all passengers–or about 170,000–get their […]
Just one week ago, Iowa’s Attorney General Tom Miller told Chris Dodd that Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Institutions Michael Barr was the key person from Treasury working with the Attorneys General investigation into foreclosure fraud. Miller: We haven’t had any contact with the [Financial Stability Oversight Council]. We have had repeated contact […]
The White House has started a pushback campaign on gate rape that is reminiscent of “Recovery Summer” or “Mission Accomplished” for its credibility. It consists of a number of things, in addition to the inevitable army of talking-point-people using the word “enhanced” the same way Cheney did. First, there are statistics. Such as their claim […]
Apparently, John Pistole not only promised to Congress–but failed to deliver–public education about why gate rape was necessary. But he ignored advice from DHS to provide a public explanation in advance, too. In an hour-long discussion with reporters, Pistole said media officials at the Department of Homeland Security had urged him to “get out ahead” […]
This summarizes everything I’ve been hearing about the forced bailout of Ireland over the weekend. The pressure for a bailout of Ireland did not come from Ireland itself—it came from Eurozone officials. If anything, Irish Finance Minister Brian Lehnihan’s announcement over the weekend that Ireland would seek a bailout was a concession to its European […]
I’m working on a longer post on John Pistole, the head of Transportation Security Administration who ordered the TSA to touch your junk. But in the meantime I wanted to point out something appalling about his recent testimony to the Senate Commerce Committee. In it, he says the following to justify expanding the use of […]
Yves Smith has a post laying out one of the most troublesome aspects of the response to the revelation of foreclosure fraud. As she explains, to conduct an “independent review” of its PR-servicing “review” of its own servicing practices, GMAC picked the lawfirm that has been in charge of its national counsel on servicing issues. […]
Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee Bennie Thompson sent Transportation Security Administration Director John Pistole a letter on Friday expressing concern that the TSA did not review privacy and civil liberty concerns before implementing the new “gate rape” procedures at airports. The letter demands additional information on the pat-downs and calls on Pistole to […]