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.
Summary: In this series of posts, I examine somefunkiness regarding the story of Mahdi Obeidi, the Iraqi nuclearscientist who claimed to have buried a nuclear centrifuge under hisrose plant. In part one, I lay out a timeline for his story. Parts two and three examine some problems with the materials he turned over.
With civil war breaking out in Iraq and Bush selling our ports to the highest bidder, I realize that dwelling on Cheney shooting an old man in the face might be indiscreet. But I wanted to make some observations about the witness reports The Smoking Gun has posted on its site.
Likkered Up
Several people have commented on the non-denial denials of how drunk the party was that afternoon.
Francis Fukuyama wants you to know that he’s no longer associated with Neo-Conservatism. Nope, he’s done with it.
Neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support.
I appreciate the public disavowal of the movement. But Fukuyama still doesn’t get it. He imagines the intentions of the Neo-Conservatives were good, and that it was just dumb luck and inaccurate intelligence that doomed
There’s been a lively discussion about labels recently–particularly as more true conservatives attempt to create a position from which to oppose Bush without ceding their identity as conservatives. It’s a discussion I’ve been thinking a lot about, not least because I’m dabbling with an argument that we need to think of the “Conservative Movement” as a more cohesive, intentional whole.
I’ve been promising for a few days now that I was going to do a post on Anne Armstrong, whom I’ve dubbed the grande dame of Republican scandal. I’ll get there, I’ll get there. But first let me talk about why I think it’s important.
By now, I think all reasonable people agree there are a number of curious discrepancies in the Deadeye Dick shooting story.
I’m working on a much more comprehensive post about the grande dame of Republican scandal, Anne Armstrong. But in the meantime, I see that most of the people who do play by play on this kind of thing are fighting the cruel Blogger gods. And I didn’t want the testiness of said grande dame and her daughter, grande-dame-in-training Katharine Armstrong, to escape notice.
You see, it appears the Adjunct Vice Presidential Press
As part of Dick Cheney’s attempt to regain the love of his adoring Fox viewer supporters the other day, he threw in a tidbit completely unrelated to the accidental shooting of his friend.
Q Let me ask you another question. Is it your view that a VicePresident has the authority to declassify information?
THE VICE PRESIDENT:
One of the most fascinating things about Dick’s little hunting accident is that it exposes Dick violating the rules–rules that few are going to argue are partisan. When Dick and Libby broke the law to out Valerie Plame, wingnuts proclaimed they were just exposing an unfair partisan attack. When Dick and Bush broke the law to eavesdrop on American citizens, most Republicans excused it by saying Democratic complaints about the law-breaking