RUTHFULLY YOURS

Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates took her turn before the Senate Monday, in a hearing focused on her role in the firing of former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. As is now routine in any discussion of the Trump-Russia story, some important details were buried amid the speculation.

Mrs. Yates recounted in detail her unusual visit in January to White House Counsel Donald McGahn, when she said she’d warned that the Justice Department had evidence that Mr. Flynn had lied to White House officials and the public about certain “problematic” conduct.

Mrs. Yates, an Obama appointee, declined to specify the conduct to the Senate, but thanks to Obama-team leaks we know it involved Mr. Flynn discussing sanctions on Russia with the Russian ambassador though he had publicly said he hadn’t. Mrs. Yates said that because the Russians knew about his lying, Mr. Flynn had been “compromised” and was vulnerable to “blackmail.” Democratic Senators repeated the “compromised” line.

Yet the salient political fact is that President Trump then fired Mr. Flynn for misleading Vice President Mike Pence and the public. Moreover, Mr. Flynn was fired despite the lack of evidence that he conveyed any truly compromising information to the Russian ambassador.

All we know is that Mr. Flynn made a passing reference in his conversation with the ambassador to U.S. sanctions against Russia—a reference Mr. Flynn says he forgot. What was there to blackmail him over?

The important question is whether there was collusion between Russians and the Trump campaign, and on that score the Yates appearance turned up nothing new. For that matter, we’re still waiting for any such evidence from the House, Senate and FBI investigations. Maybe it exists, but no one has produced it.

So far the only crime we know about in this drama is the leak of Mr. Flynn’s name to the press as having been overheard when U.S. intelligence was eavesdropping on the Russian ambassador. Mr. Flynn’s name was leaked in violation of the law after he was “unmasked” by an Obama Administration official and his name was distributed widely across the government.

We don’t know who did the unmasking, but on Monday both Mrs. Yates and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper admitted that while in office they had personally reviewed classified reports about “Mr. Trump, his officials or members of Congress” who had been “unmasked.” Both also admitted that they had shared that information with others in government, though they did deny leaking to the press.

We thought readers might like to know those details in case they go unreported anywhere else in the press. The unmasking of the names of political opponents is a serious concern, and the American people need to know how and why that happened here.

With Neil Gorsuch safely on the Supreme Court, the White House is turning its attention to the lower federal courts. President Trump took a major step Monday, naming five new nominees to the federal appellate courts and five to the district courts.

The five appellate nominees are Joan Larsen of the Michigan Supreme Court and John Bush of Kentucky to the Sixth Circuit, Kevin Newsom of Alabama to the 11th Circuit, David Stras of Minnesota to the Eighth Circuit and Amy Barrett of Indiana to the Seventh Circuit.

Judges Larsen and Stras were on Mr. Trump’s original list of 21 judges he said he’d consider for the Supreme Court, and the group has sterling credentials. Ms. Barrett is a law professor at Notre Dame who clerked for federal Judge Laurence Silberman, a giant of the appellate circuits, as well as the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Mr. Newsom is a former clerk to Justice David Souter and has argued multiple cases before the Supreme Court. Mr. Bush is a highly regarded lawyer in private practice who represented President Reagan during the Iran-Contra investigations.

It’s likely the left will pressure Democratic Senators like Al Franken (Minnesota) and Joe Donnelly (Indiana) to withhold their endorsements of the home state judges, known as “blue slips.” But White House Counsel Donald McGahn has put together impressive nominees who will be hard to obstruct for reasons beyond raw partisanship.

Prompt Senate action on the nominations is important—not least because the number of vacancies on the federal bench is around 129. After these latest nominees, that includes 14 on the appellate circuits. President Obama made 331 judicial appointments, and his nominees to the federal appeals courts now represent about a third of the judges.

According to the Brookings Institution, as of September 2016 there were 92 liberal appellate judges and 75 conservatives. It’s time to redress the balance in the 115th Congress while Republicans have a Senate majority.

We live in an age of identity politics, which is a misleading way of saying we are segregated – by race, religion, socio-economic positions and sex. Differences do exist, and highlighting them is a way to spotlight societal problems. But partition today is done, cynically, for political purposes – to compartmentalize voters for easy access. As a nation, we need debate but should focus on commonalities. However, in the matter of the sexes, it is the difference between men and women that is fundamental to our continued existence. After all, without procreation we would die off.

All agree, there is no excuse for sexual harassment and that there should be equal pay for equal work – that women should have the same opportunity as men in terms of education and careers. And – despite the above Wodehouse quote – intelligence is not confined to one gender. Respect should have no boundaries.

We are formed by our past. While I went to an all-boys high school and spent forty years on male-dominated Wall Street trading floors, I was fortunate to have been raised in a household, and in a family, where women were always considered equal to men. Of my parents, my mother was the more dominant, and certainly had more of a head for business than my father. While both were artists, he was quiet and reserved, interested in sculpture, nature and his children. My maternal grandmother was raised in the south and in Washington, D.C. She married at 18 and, with her husband, moved into the New Haven home of her widowed father-in-law, where she became the head of a large household. While she never went to college, she was, according to my father, as well-read as anyone he knew. My paternal grandmother married at age 31. In the late 1890s and early 1900s, she spent six years studying at M.I.T., which accepted her tuition, but refused to grant her a degree because of her sex. She always remembered that slight, but didn’t let it consume her. She lived to be 93, and maintained a life-long interest in public health, an interest nurtured at M.I.T.

The gender equality I encountered in my youth was accompanied with a chivalrous attitude toward women. I was taught to remove my hat and open doors for women, to pull out their chair when they came to the table. This was not because they were incapable of doing so themselves, but as a sign of respect. (If you had seen my mother on a horse you would know she wasn’t fragile.) Shortly after I met my wife, she and I drove out to Wellesley to visit my paternal grandparents. My grandfather had just turned 89 and Caroline was in her early 20s. When she walked into the room, he stood. Civility and manners that make for genteel behavior are neither condescending nor patronizing. They lubricate rules of civility.

The 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, was ratified in August 1920, a hundred and thirty-one years after George Washington was inaugurated. Neither of my grandmothers could vote until they were middle-aged. When I was growing up most women did not go to college and careers open to men were not open to them. In high school, girls took “home economics,” while boys took “shop.” Ten years later, in the mid 1960s, opportunities for women were still limited. The feminist movement was well-timed. Women like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem led marches for jobs, equal treatment and rights. The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was passed by Congress in 1972, but only ratified by 32 States, so never became part of the Constitution. Phyllis Schlafly was, in part, responsible for its failure. Her argument: women bear babies, so must be cared for by the men who get them pregnant, an observation rooted in biology. Nevertheless, over time, most of what the ERA demanded has been enacted into law, and/or have become part of the accepted norm. There are more women in universities today than men. While not equally represented in government, business, law, academia and the military, they have made in-roads inconceivable to those of my parents’ and grandparents’ generation.