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.
As the prosecutors in Omar Khadr’s sentencing hearing try to undercut the testimony of a defense witness who believes Khadr can be rehabilitated, not least because of his age, an anonymous White House official justifies to Josh Rogin Obama’s decision to undercut a law prohibiting the government from funding countries that use child soldiers. As […]
As Adam Serwer noted, a family apparently dressed in Muslim garb was removed from a plane and questioned by the FBI today. Some cannot help but think their appearance had something to do with a family’s removal from a plane Tuesday morning at Memphis International Airport. “My understanding is they were dressed in attire that […]
ACLU reports that Rahim al-Nashiri’s lawyer’s request to include their client’s treatment at a black site in Poland in the country’s investigation has been successful. The Polish prosecutor will investigate the detention and torture of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri at a black site in Poland after he was kidnapped and transported there by the CIA. [snip] […]
According to MarketTicker via 4closureFraud, Fidelity National has done the thing (at least in Florida) that makes it demand that mortgage servicers warrant against mistakes-otherwise-known-as-fraud meaningful. Eh, I have an update from Fidelity Title – this is for Florida foreclosures. Here’s the salient “trouble spot” – this is what must be in the foreclosure docket […]
I eagerly await Jeff Kaye’s take on the defense cross-examination of Dr. Michael Welner, whose anti-Muslim bias Jeff laid out here. Thus far, the defense has shown Welner didn’t read one of the studies he relied on for his Khadr profile, shown his work was not peer reviewed, and challenged Welner on his research methods: […]
After having managed the Wikileak dump as an opportunity to dial up another NYT A1 fearmongering Michael Gordon article against Iran, DOD has turned to complaining about Wikileaks again. But given the vagueness described in this complaint, I can’t help but wonder whether William Lynn is using the term “adversary” rather loosely. U.S. Deputy Defense […]
Only, as of this weekend, we have completely lost command and control of a whole bunch of ICBMs. President Obama was briefed this morning on a power failure at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming that took 50 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), one-ninth of the U.S. missile stockpile, temporarily offline on Saturday. [snip] […]
The asshole in charge of shredding our Constitution has a really sick sense of humor. Yesterday, the same day the government got Omar Khadr to plead guilty to crimes that aren’t crimes that occurred when he was a child, Obama issued this memorandum. By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and […]
David Cay Johnston has a must-read piece on what the most recent payroll tax data shows about growing income inequality. He shows that total wages have fallen 5% since 2007, largely because so many fewer people are making any income. Every 34th wage earner in America in 2008 went all of 2009 without earning a […]
Omar Khadr’s confession makes me sad. Sad that we insisted on prosecuting a child soldier for defending himself. But also sad for the lies we included in his plea deal to prop up the government’s dubious stories about Khadr and detainees generally. For example, can anyone explain to me how Khadr could be an alien […]