Free Republic

Robert Wilkie has been confirmed as the next secretary to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, becoming the first nominee for the job to face any opposing votes in the Senate. This is the first time in the 30-year history of the post that senators have voted against a president's nominee. Wilkie, 55, has vowed to “shake up complacency” at the government's second-largest agency, whose veterans have faced long wait times for medical care. Wilkie was nominated to replace the former secretary, David Shulkin, who was fired by Trump following infighting at the agency and ethics questions.

Robert Wilkie, President Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, is a conservative Washington insider who would bring three decades of military policymaking and a deep list of Capitol Hill connections to a Cabinet post responsible for serving one of the administration’s most crucial constituencies. But when he appears Wednesday for his Senate confirmation hearing, Wilkie also will draw on a career spent working shoulder to shoulder with polarizing figures in U.S. politics and often defending their most divisive views. Wilkie, 55, has impeccable credentials: three decades at the center of the country’s most important military policies. The...

By the end of the 1930s the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt had lost a great deal of its luster. While the New Deal undeniably brought tangible benefits to millions of Americans, it had not delivered on its promise of economic recovery. Ten years after the Great Crash of 1929, nearly one worker in five was unemployed, despite the administration having racked up a series of budget deficits that were unprecedented in peacetime. Moreover, the president himself was caught in a dilemma — there was no up-and-coming Democrat whom he believed to be a worthy successor to the Oval Office....

Wilkie v Frank Robbins Case: Right to exclude arguedWyoming Rancher refuses to grant BLM a right-of-way across his private land by Cat Urbigkit, Pinedale Online! February 28, 2007 In late January 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court has received its first briefs in federal appeal filed by Bureau of Land Management officials after an appeals court sided with Worland-area rancher Frank Robbins case. It’s been just over a year since the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that BLM employees cannot retaliate against a ranch owner for refusing to grant the BLM a right-of-way across his private land. The court’s ruling...

Campaign '04: As in most presidential elections, a through-the-looking-glass quality has taken over this one. Actually, as Sen. John Kerry flails about on the Iraq war, it has sailed straight into the surreal. Before taking in the Dali-like dreamscape that is the Kerry campaign, voters should soberly study the high-minded standard set by Sen. Zell Miller. High-minded? According to the punditocracy, the Georgia Democrat who keynoted the Republican National Convention descended to new lows of campaign rhetoric. Why, he even challenged his own party's patriotism. He did not, of course. But when Miller carefully distinguished between patriotism and judgment, other...

An Oxford University professor resigned after being suspended for rejecting a graduate student because he is Israeli. Oxford suspended Andrew Wilkie for telling Amit Duvshani, “I am sure you are perfectly nice at a personal level, but no way would I take on somebody who had served in the Israeli army.” The penalty the university had imposed — suspension without pay — is Oxford’s severest penalty short of dismissal, the university said in a statement. Wilkie submitted his resignation from Oxford’s Pembroke College on Monday, the day the suspension was announced

Don is suspended over Israeli slur By Stewart Payne (Filed: 28/10/2003) An Oxford University professor who sent an email stating that he would not teach a foreign student who had served with the Israeli army was suspended from his post yesterday. Andrew Wilkie, the Nuffield professor of pathology, has been told to stay away from his academic duties for two months and will receive no pay for the duration of his suspension. In his email to Amit Duvshani, a 26-year-old student at Tel Aviv University, the professor said: "I am sure that you are perfectly nice at a personal level...

<p>CANBERRA, Australia (CNN) -- The heat being generated over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction has moved to Australia with a former senior intelligence officer accusing Canberra of exaggerating the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime.</p> <p>Speaking to an inquiry called by the Australian Senate, Andrew Wilkie said Friday information in intelligence reports had been distorted by the prime minister's office and "sexed up" to suit the government's political agenda.</p>

Oxford University on Saturday issued a statement apologizing for the behavior of one of its professors, who told an Israeli candidate for an internship that he refused to employ those who have served in the Israel Defense Forces. Professor Andrew Wilkie from Oxford University's School of Molecular Medicine sent Amit Duvshani, who recently completed his graduate degree in biology at Tel Aviv University, an e-mail, in which he accused Israel of "gross infringements of the Palestinians' human rights, simply because they want to live in their own land." He added that he is not the only British scientist with similar...