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.
It’s funny how, now that we’re so attuned to BushCo’s Friday news dumps, something reported on Friday attracts more notice than something reported on Thursday.
On Friday, we learned that Rachel Brand, one of the last remaining DOJ clique-members (and a tangential one at that) will resign on July 9.
Rachel Brand, the assistant attorney general in the Office of LegalPolicy, will step down July 9, the department said in a statement.
As I said earlier, the most interesting part of the Tatel opinion is the two-page section that remains redacted (thanks again to Jeralyn for making the opinion available), explaining why Fitzgerald suspects Rove perjured himself in his testimony about Novak and Cooper. I believe that section includes:An assertion that Rove lied when he testified that he responded to Novak’s story about Plame by saying, “you heard that too?”A description of some
Tim Walberg is a really awful wingnutty Congressman whose district begins just spitting distance (emphasis on spitting) from my house. One of the local reporters, Susan Demas, had the balls to report that he refused to fire a campaign worker who pled guilty to child abuse, so the Congressman has basically frozen the newspaper out since then.
Pow wow is right. One of the best parts of today’s Appeals Court order releasing more of the grand jury material from the Plame investigation is this paragraph:
Even if the Armitage revelation created a compelling public interest in them—and it
is unclear to us why, as Dow Jones asserts, the Special Counsel’s knowledge that one individual leaked Plame’s identity calls into question the validity of his continuing investigation into others who may
The White House had a super-secret briefing yesterday in which they trotted out Fred Fielding, but then insisted he be referred to solely as a Senior Administration Official. Perhaps they insisted on the absurd background rules because they wanted to make Fred feel free to lie. And lie he did.
In the briefing, a journalist asked Fielding whether Bush’s invocation of privilege meant that he was protecting deliberations he, personally, was involved
One last post on Clement. I wanted to call your attention to the way Clement pretends that the White House is protecting advice from outsiders that they solicited. Here’s Clement’s language justifying invoking privilege over communications between the White House and those outside of government.
Naturally, in order for the President and his advisers to make an informed decision, presidential aides must sometimes solicit information from individuals outside the White House and
Nope, I still haven’t stopped obsessing over Clement’s opinion on the subpoenas.
As I pointed out yesterday, Clement makes one claim that I believe is false and probably disingenuous. He claims that Bush has a nondelegable power to appoint US Attorneys, inscribed in the Constitution.
These confidentiality interests are particularly strongwhere, as here, the communications may implicate a “quintessential andnondelegable Presidential power,” such as the authority to nominate orto remove U.S.
This bears mentioning.
Congress subpoenaed the White House for information on the USA Purge on June 13, just 15 days ago. Already, OLC has done its review, Paul Clement has written his opinion, and Fred Fielding has provided a response to Congress. 15 days.
Bill Leonard, head of ISOO, wrote Alberto Gonzales on January 9 for an opinion on whether Cheney was indeed exempt from Bush’s own Executive Order.
I’m still obsessing about Paul Clement’s opinion on whether Bush can assert executive privilege over documents relating to the US Attorney purge. Here’s a little tidbit I find interesting.
Clement is discussing the third chunk of things Congress requested.
The final category of documents and testimony concerns communications between the
Department of Justice and the White House concerning proposals to dismiss and replace U.S.
I’d like to use some details from the WaPo’s story on Booz Allen’s no-bid contract this morning to put some things in perspective. The article cites the SSCI with a price tag for each contract employee:
The average annual cost ofa contract employee is $250,000, almost twice that of a federalemployee, according to an estimate recently cited by the Senate SelectCommittee on Intelligence.
I’m guessing that, since so many federal employees are unionized,