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.
The jury in Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani’s trial for his role in the 1998 embassy bombings has found him guilty of conspiracy, but not the charges of terrorism he was accused of. With the one count, however, he may still face a life sentence. It appears likely that just one juror voted against the other charges […]
Not long ago, an independent group showed that the access to justice for the average American rivaled that of a banana republic. And no one is making much of an effort to fix that problem. As DDay reported last week, while the Dodd-Frank bill authorized $35 million to support legal services, no one has appropriated […]
As Arthur Delaney reports, CBO just came out with analysis that shows unemployment insurance kept an extra percent of the population out of poverty last year (which would work out to be around 3 million people). Extended unemployment insurance put in place to fight the recession prevented the poverty rate from rising to 15.4 percent […]
One of the things the Congressional Oversight Panel recommended the other day was new stress tests for banks, given the mounting evidence that botched securitization may make them insolvent (okay — that last bit is my shorthand). Today, the Fed ordered up those stress tests. The Fed, in guidance issued today, said all 19 banks […]
Chris Dodd didn’t have many questions in yesterday’s hearing on the foreclosure crisis. But he did use the opportunity to call on Tim Geithner to convene the Financial Stability Oversight Council to prevent this crisis from blowing up the economy. Dodd: Attorney General Miller, at the outset of my opening comments I talked about the […]
About four hours ago, Iowa’s Attorney General Tom Miller testified to the Senate Banking Committee it would be months before the combined AG “investigation” came up with a settlement (he also suggested that there were new aspects that were just being added to the “investigation”). Dodd: How long AG investigation? Miller: Months, rather than year […]
See Part One of this liveblog here. Shelby was actually pretty good, but then Johanns and Bennett went to some length to try to pretend the banksters weren’t doing what they were doing. Johnson: Does the law need to be change? Levitin: It’s not the law, it’s compliance w/the law. What was governing securitization was […]
For some reason, Andrew Ross Sorkin felt the need to weigh in on the debate over whether Rick Wagoner or Team Auto should get credit for GM’s turnaround. He probably shouldn’t have, seeing as how some of his evidence against Wagoner is that “he wasn’t able or willing to cull failing brands like Pontiac, for […]
The TARP Congressional Oversight Panel just released a report dedicated to the foreclosure fraud problem and the securitization mess underlying it. They conclude that the problems may represent a significant problem for the housing market and the financial system more generally. Here’s a great summary of why: If documentation problems prove to be pervasive and, […]
Binyam Mohamed and a number of other detainees will be paid millions by the British government to compensate for their role in torturing him. Around a dozen men who accused British security forces of colluding in their transfer overseas are to get millions in compensation from the UK government. Some of the men, who are […]