Free Republic

A federal appeals court judge repeatedly asked Friday whether dropping the case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn would mean police can escape accountability for brutalizing black people. DC Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins raised the possibility as Flynn’s attorneys and the Justice Department pleaded with a skeptical three-judge panel to order US District Judge Emmet Sullivan to dismiss Flynn’s case and his 2017 guilty plea for lying to the FBI. Wilkins, an African American Harvard Law School graduate, asked whether dismissing Flynn’s case would mean that judges must also dismiss cases against police if prosecutors offer racist reasons.

Flynn & the U.S. v. Sullivan (AKA In Re: Michael T. Flynn) is going to be streamed from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals tomorrow (Friday) at 9:30 AM EST. The court is expecting a lot of interest in the case, so they’re directing people to their YouTube channel, which is here:

Some LGBT advocates say those with same-sex attraction who use "avoidance techniques" are cheating.Martin Luther wrote, "If your head is made of butter, stay away from the fire." Sound advice for anyone seeking freedom from a bad habit or sinful temptation.To listen to gay supporters, one should be able to immerse themselves in all things homosexual and have the will power to abstain from sin.Are avoidance techniques true in the natural realm?Indeed they are. Someone might say the very term "avoidance techniques" sounds unbiblical.Fair skinned persons should avoid the noon day sun; that would include me. I burn easily.Persons allergic...

Democratic New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen was principally involved in a plot with Lois Lerner and President Barack Obama’s political appointee at the IRS to lead a program of harassment against conservative nonprofit groups during the 2012 election, according to letters exclusively obtained by The Daily Caller. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) did not want to publicly release 2012 correspondences exchanged between the IRS and Jeanne Shaheen at her personal Washington office: the agency delayed releasing the information to a major conservative super PAC multiple times, even threatening to see the super PAC in court, according to emails. (RELATED: Lois...

Senate Republicans on Monday blocked a third nominee of President Obama’s to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. In a 53-38 vote, the Senate failed to get the 60 votes necessary to break a Republican filibuster and move to a final confirmation vote on nominee Robert Leon Wilkins. Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) were the only Republicans to vote to end the filibuster. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) also switched his vote to no to preserve his ability to bring the nomination to the floor again. The GOP argues confirming Wilkins to the court would tilt...

The Obama appointee implicated in congressional testimony in the IRS targeting scandal met with President Obama in the White House two days before offering his colleagues a new set of advice on how to scrutinize tea party and conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. IRS chief counsel William Wilkins, who was named in House Oversight testimony by retiring IRS agent Carter Hull as one of his supervisors in the improper targeting of conservative groups, met with Obama in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on April 23, 2012. Wilkins’ boss, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, met with Obama on April...

The IRS scandal was connected this week not just to the Washington office—that had been established—but to the office of the chief counsel. That is a bombshell—such a big one that it managed to emerge in spite of an unfocused, frequently off-point congressional hearing in which some members seemed to have accidentally woken up in the middle of a committee room, some seemed unaware of the implications of what their investigators had uncovered, one pretended that the investigation should end if IRS workers couldn't say the president had personally called and told them to harass his foes, and one seemed...

Top IRS officials in Washington, D.C. planned and oversaw the agency’s improper targeting of conservative groups, according to the 72-year old retiring IRS lawyer who will testify Thursday before the House Oversight Committee. Retiring IRS lawyer Carter C. Hull implicated the IRS Chief Counsel’s office, headed by Obama appointee William J. Wilkins, and Lois Lerner, the embattled head of the IRS’ exempt organizations office, in the IRS targeting scandal and made clear that the targeting started in Washington, according to leaked interviews that Hull granted to the Oversight Committee in advance of Thursday’s hearing. Treasury Inspector General J. Russell George...

ATLANTA (AP) -- Hall of Famer and Atlanta Hawks televsion analyst Dominique Wilkins was attacked by a spectator after the team's victory Wednesday night over the Orlando Magic, the team said. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the spectator -- 36-year-old Rashan S. Michel, of Atlanta -- has worked as an NBA and college basketball referee. Wilkins is also a vice president with the team. He had just finished working Atlanta's 85-82 victory Wednesday night from his customary spot on press row when the alleged incident occurred at Philips Arena.

Charles Phillips, a member of Obama's economic recovery advisory board, confessed after giant posters appeared of him with his lover. A millionaire businessman who advises Barack Obama on economic policy has been forced to admit an affair after a series of giant billboards showing him with his long-time mistress appeared across America. The photos of Charles Phillips, 50, and YaVaughnie Wilkins, 41, were shown on posters three-storeys high, with the line "You are my soulmate forever – cep" – thought to be a reference to Charles E. Phillips. The poster also advertises a website which featured love notes and pictures...

TROMSOE, Norway (Reuters) – An area of an Antarctic ice shelf almost the size of New York City has broken into icebergs this month after the collapse of an ice bridge widely blamed on global warming, a scientist said Tuesday. "The northern ice front of the Wilkins Ice Shelf has become unstable and the first icebergs have been released," Angelika Humbert, glaciologist at the University of Muenster in Germany, said of European Space Agency satellite images of the shelf. Humbert told Reuters about 700 sq km (270.3 sq mile) of ice -- bigger than Singapore or Bahrain and almost the...

PARIS (AFP) – The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said the breakway of a Jamaica-sized ice shelf from the Antarctic peninsula could accelerate global warming in this already vulnerable region. Satellite pictures show a 40-kilometre (25-mile) ice bridge that was the Wilkins Ice Shelf's last link to the coast had now shattered at its narrowest point, about 500 metres (yards) wide, UNEP said. The Wilkins Ice Shelf once covered around 16,000 square kilometres (6,000 square miles) before it began to retreat in the 1990s, and by last May the ice bridge was all that connected it to Charcot and Latady islands....

PARIS (AFP) – A Jamaica-sized ice shelf is close to wrenching itself away from Antarctica, following dramatic weakening of an ice "bridge" linking it to the continent, the European Space Agency (ESA) reported Friday. The icy umbilical cord tying the Wilkins Ice Shelf to two islands on the Antarctic peninsula "looks set to collapse," ESA said. The evidence comes from radar pictures taken on Thursday by its Envisat Earth-monitoring satellite, the Paris-based agency said in a press release. Scientists have been keeping a worried eye on this ice shelf for years. For many, it is a barometer of global warming,...

WILKINS ICE SHELF, Antarctica (Reuters) - A huge Antarctic ice shelf is on the brink of collapse with just a sliver of ice holding it in place, the latest victim of global warming that is altering maps of the frozen continent. "We've come to the Wilkins Ice Shelf to see its final death throes," David Vaughan, a glaciologist at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), told Reuters after the first -- and probably last -- plane landed near the narrowest part of the ice. The flat-topped shelf has an area of thousands of square kilometers, jutting 20 meters (65 ft) out...

Satellite images show the runaway disintegration of a 160-square-mile chunk in western Antarctica, which started Feb. 28. It was the edge of the Wilkins ice shelf and has been there for hundreds, maybe 1,500 years. This is the result of global warming, said British Antarctic Survey scientist David Vaughan. Because scientists noticed satellite images within hours, they diverted satellite cameras and even flew an airplane over the ongoing collapse for rare pictures and video. "It's an event we don't get to see very often," said Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo....

A vast ice shelf hanging on by a thin strip looks to be the next chunk to break off from the Antarctic Peninsula, the latest sign of global warming's impact on Earth's southernmost continent. Scientists are shocked by the rapid change of events. Glaciologist Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado was monitoring satellite images of the Wilkins Ice Shelf and spotted a huge iceberg measuring 25 miles by 1.5 miles (41 kilometers by 2.5 kilometers - about 10 times the area of Manhattan) that appeared to have broken away from the shelf. Scambos alerted colleagues at the British Antarctic...

U.S. ambassador a Canuck-at-heart TORONTO SUN Sunday, May 28, 2006 By MICHELE MANDEL OTTAWA -- After a year as U.S. ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins can now hum a few bars of O Canada and even tell you where maple syrup comes from. "That was a set-up," he protests, a sheepish note creeping into a South Carolina drawl as thick as the Canadian syrup. "It comes from a maple tree." Not only that, this transplanted southerner has adopted our national passion ("I was pulling very hard for the Senators to win"), loves Beavertails, has sampled poutine ("I like the...

U.S. is 'walking the walk' when it comes to environmental issues, David Wilkins says OTTAWA — The Bush administration issued a sharp, public rebuke today to Prime Minister Paul Martin for dragging the Canadian-U.S. relationship into the federal election campaign. Ambassador David Wilkins said Canada risks damaging one of the world’s best relationships by focusing on short-term political gain. “It may be smart election-year politics to thump your chest and criticize your friend and your No. 1 trading partner constantly,” Wilkins said in a speech to the Canadian Club at the historic Chateau Laurier Hotel, next door to Parliament Hill....

The U.S. ambassador to Canada has rebuked Prime Minister Paul Martin, saying he risks damaging relations between the countries by dragging the United States into the federal election campaign. Wilkins didn't name Martin directly but left no doubt that he was talking about the prime minister when he warned against scoring cheap political points against Washington. "It may be smart election-year politics to thump your chest and criticize your friend and your No. 1 trading partner constantly," Ambassador David Wilkins said in a speech to the Canadian Club in Ottawa on Tuesday. "But it is a slippery slope, and all...

Thought y'all might get a hoot out of this one. It's a true story about the time Gen Wes Clarks armoured car was stolen. I was a Staff Sgt assigned to Allied Forces Northern Command Europe (AFNORTH) in Brunssum, Holland, from 96 to 2000. One day one of the sgt's I worked with brought in a pice of paper telling us to be on the lookout for Gen Wes Clarks armoured car. I thought it was just a bad joke until I read about it in the Stars and Stripes a day or two later. I can't remember all the...