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.
Senator Coburn spent about 20 straight minutes today whining to Elena Kagan about how much less freedom we have today than we did 30 years ago. Which Amy Klobuchar promptly shredded–by far the highlight of today’s hearing. As she points out, back in Coburn’s idyllic free time, women were not represented on the Supreme Court–and […]
Time for another blogger ethics panel. Or maybe just a bloggers’ style guide, one that states unequivocally that waterboarding is torture. Because–as Glenn reported earlier–the dead tree press only calls waterboarding torture when others do it. And they stopped referring to it as torture as soon as it became clear it had become US policy. […]
From Elena Kagan’s first comments about Cheney’s illegal wiretapping program yesterday (at 2:10), it sounds almost like she’d vote for rule of law in the al-Haramain case (though the case is probably in the gray area of cases on which she should recuse herself). DiFi: And we have just had a case. It came–by a […]
Earlier Tuesday, I did a post aiming to understand the timing of Monday’s bust of 11 alleged Russian spies. Later in the day, Mark Hosenball did a post–heavily reliant on DOJ press spokesperson Dean Boyd–that doesn’t make any sense. First, Boyd states on the record that the reason DOJ had to move now on the busts […]
This exchange is one of the most telling from the entire Kagan hearing today (note; we’ve edited this exchange for length; here’s the full exchange; also, while you’re watching, keep an eye on the body language of the bearded man sitting behind Kagan, White House Counsel Bob Bauer). It’s striking, first of all, because Lindsey […]
I’m going to assume that this was just a misstatement on Elena Kagan’s part, but it’s one that I hope she corrects before her confirmation hearings are done. In response to a question from DiFi, Kagan suggested that SCOTUS’ decision in the Hamdi case–which relied on the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force passed after […]
As a number of you have commented, DOJ announced the arrest of 10 alleged Russian spies yesterday (with one person, based in another country, remaining at large). The alleged spies are basically people living under false identities tasked to network with influential Americans to learn specific information. One of the most interesting questions about the […]
Oiled up BP Judge Martin Feldman was required by both statutory and ethical considerations to recuse himself; at a absolute base minimum to disclose his appearances of conflict on the record; but he did neither. Any competent standard of lawyering would mandate the government to raise the issue if they are going to fight Feldman’s ruling; but they have not. The public ought to be asking what the hell is going on here.
As I’ve noted before (here and here), confirmation hearings for James Clapper have gotten bogged down in a dispute between the Administration and both houses of Congress over whether Congress should have the tools to exercise real oversight of intelligence functions. Right now, Nancy Pelosi is holding out for both extended notification to the Intelligence […]
Let me start by laying out a few details about Erik Prince that have been reported of late. Prince recently gave a speech I interpreted as a proposal for private contractors to serve as big oil’s enforcer–including in Nigeria and Iran Blackwater illegally tried (but allegedly failed) to negotiate a deal to train guards for […]