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.
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 […]
So here’s some things to contemplate about this week in the NFL. The Jay Cutler-led Bears already won this week (it helps to play a team the week after they got cleaned out of QBs), putting them, for the moment at least, half a game ahead of the team led by Aaron Rogers and miles […]
Finally, some good news coming out of November’s election. Debbie Stabenow has been selected to replace the outgoing Blanche Lincoln as Chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee. (There had been some concern that Big Ag would oppose someone like Stabenow and instead push Kent Conrad to take the position.) As I’ve explained before, this means […]
DDay has a really important post that–along with a great interview with Brad Miller–includes a letter from Miller and other members of Congress, urging the Financial Stability Oversight Council to take action to prevent the foreclosure fraud problem from becoming a systemic crisis. The letter reminds the FSOC that Dodd-Frank gives them the power to […]
Apparently, the Jan Schakowsky’s House Subcommittee completed its investigations of all the times the CIA failed to inform the Gang of Eight about covert ops and in other ways broke the law. Apparently, that investigation found “several instances” where CIA failed for follow the law procedures. But you can’t know precisely what those violations are, […]
When Steven Rattner published this piece on the GM IPO in HuffPo, he had not yet been sued by NY’s Attorney General for allegedly being “willing to do whatever it took to get his hands on pension fund money including paying kickbacks, orchestrating a movie deal, and funneling campaign contributions,” nor had he yet settled–with […]
Wall Street and the Administration are hailing the GM IPO and claiming victory. General Motors Co GM.UL pulled off the biggest initial public offering in U.S. history on Wednesday, raising $20.1 billion after pricing shares at the top of the proposed range in response to huge investor demand. GM sold 478 million common shares at […]
More like this please: “So, we tried a guy (who the Bush Admin tortured and then held at GTMO for 4-plus years with no end game whatsoever) in a federal court before a NY jury with full transparency and international legitimacy and — despite all of the legacy problems of the case (i.e., evidence getting […]