RUTHFULLY YOURS

A women-only social club is being investigated by the New York Commission on Human Rights. It’s almost certainly illegal.

The Wing is a women-only social club and workspace in New York and Washington, D.C. One of its founders worked for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and its in-house magazine, No Man’s Land, once featured a trans woman named Hari Nef on the cover. Members say it empowers them, allows them to work without the specter of sexual harassment that lurks around so many corners, and provides them with a valuable social network. It is “not for everybody in the whole world,” one of its members told Jezebel, “but for a specific slice of it” whose members share “certain community values.” Score one for free association.

Except the Wing, precisely because it is a women-only social club and workspace, appears to be in plain violation of New York’s public-accommodations law. Jezebel’s J.K. Trotter has the story. It is illegal in New York, as it is across the country, for businesses that provide public accommodations to “deny” the “full and equal enjoyment” of those accommodations to someone because of his gender (or race, creed, sexuality, etc.). There are exceptions: Groups that have fewer than 400 members and meet certain criteria can qualify as “distinctly private” clubs, which are permitted to discriminate. Meanwhile, larger businesses can apply for exemptions in the “bona fide interests of public policy,” though only three such exemptions have been granted in the last ten years. The Wing has more than 1,500 members, and has not applied for an exemption. Therefore, Trotter reports, it is under investigation by the New York Commission on Human Rights. A civil-rights litigator tells him the group is “likely illegal.”

The possibility that a trendy social club espousing progressive values and contributing to female empowerment is illegal has led to some wishcasting. Law professor Melissa Murray tells Trotter that the investigation is “patently absurd,” and finds the notion that anti-discrimination laws might apply to women’s groups “ludicrous.” Because the mayor of New York is Bill de Blasio, perhaps the Wing will survive: A city spokesman tells New York magazine that the mayor “is fully supportive of the Wing’s mission.” But whether or not New York files suit, it should not be particularly controversial to assert that a business that both furnishes public accommodations and discriminates on the basis of gender might be on the wrong side of an anti-discrimination statute.

In his review of recent books about the life of former President Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Rhodes (Books, March 17) repeats the now well-known warning made by President Eisenhower in his Jan. 17, 1961 speech about the “military-industrial complex.” It is important also to recall another warning the president made in the same speech about the need for universities in the U.S. to maintain freedom and independence from federal control imposed by the government making federal grants for research and other programs and activities sponsored by the universities. The president said: “The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by federal employment, project allocations and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

Em. Prof. John A. Clark University of Michigan

Critics often accuse the National Rifle Association of paranoia for arguing that gun controllers want to eliminate the Second Amendment. Well, being paranoid doesn’t mean the NRA is wrong.

Look no further than former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who is arguing this week that the Parkland, Florida, students and their allies shouldn’t settle for mere restrictions on guns. They should lobby Congress and the states to abolish the Second Amendment.

“Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of that amendment,” the 97-year-old former Justice wrote in an op-ed published in The New York Times Tuesday, adding, “today that concern is a relic of the 18th century.”

Apparently Justice Stevens is still sore about losing the argument in the 2008 landmark gun-rights case, D.C. v. Heller. He wrote the dissent in that case arguing that the Second Amendment was merely intended to support a militia, not the individual right to bear arms.

Former Associate Justice John Paul Stevens was a foe of any broad reading of the Second Amendment while he served on the U.S. Supreme Court. He dissented from the 2008 majority decision in the District of Columbia v. Heller case, which held that there was an individual right to bear arms. Mr. Stevens is now going even further in his retirement, writing an op-ed column for the New York Times entitled “John Paul Stevens: Repeal the Second Amendment.”

Mr. Stevens is of the view that the Second Amendment is an artifact with no current beneficial purpose to serve. “Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states,” he wrote in his op-ed column, “led to the adoption of that amendment, which provides that ‘a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.’ Today that concern is a relic of the 18th century.”

In his op-ed column Mr. Steven sharply criticized the Heller decision, which he wrote “has provided the N.R.A. with a propaganda weapon of immense power.” Mr. Stevens added: “Overturning that decision via a constitutional amendment to get rid of the Second Amendment would be simple and would do more to weaken the N.R.A.’s ability to stymie legislative debate and block constructive gun control legislation than any other available option.”

Mr. Stevens provides no reasoning in his op-ed column to speak of for getting rid of the Bill of Rights amendment to the Constitution protecting the right of the people to keep and bear arms that comes right after the First Amendment’s protection of free speech, free exercise of religion, the right to petition the government and the right of assembly. We need to look back at his dissenting opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, joined by liberals Justice Souter, Justice Ginsburg, and Justice Breyer, to get a sense of his disdain for any continuing relevance of the Second Amendment in today’s society. In his dissent, he rejected the notion that the framers of the Constitution “intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution” or had “the slightest interest in limiting any legislature’s authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms.”

Christopher Steele, the author of the Steele Dossier that alleges Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, also penned a report for the FBI that supposedly sheds light on one of the most puzzling incidents in recent history.

Mikhail Lesin was a former Russian media tycoon who was minister of the press early in Vladimir Putin’s tenure as president. Later, he played a role in stifling Russian independent media and used thuggish tactics to acquire huge holdings in Russian media companies.

Lesin was found dead in his DC Dupont Circle Hotel room in 2015. He died as a result of head and body trauma — an “accident,” the coroner said. Authorities say that Lesin died as a result of multiple falls after going on a two-day drinking binge.

But nobody ever bought that explanation. It was 11 months before a severely redacted autopsy report was released and to this day, even with many FOIA requests and digging by reporters, the mystery surrounding Lesin’s death persists.

Steele gave the FBI a report gleaned from several Russian sources that states that Lesin was murdered unintentionally — that he had a falling out with an oligarch close to Putin who wanted to send a message to Lesin but killed him by accident. The bureau got the report from Steele as it was helping D.C. police investigate the case.

BuzzFeed has the story:

Steele’s report says that Lesin was bludgeoned to death by enforcers working for an oligarch close to Putin, the four sources said.

The thugs had been instructed to beat Lesin, not kill him, but they went too far, the sources said Steele wrote.

Three of the sources said that the report described the killers as Russian state security agents moonlighting for the oligarch.
The Steele report is not the FBI’s only source for this account of Lesin’s death: Three other people, acting independently from Steele, said they also told the FBI that Lesin had been bludgeoned to death by enforcers working for the same oligarch named by Steele.

Even more surprising, federal prosecutors called witnesses before a sitting grand jury in 2016. It is not known what those witnesses testified to, but 150 pages of information were amassed and are being sought by numerous news outlets. CONTINUE AT SITE

Stoneman Douglas students’ passion is not wisdom.

All you needed to know about student activist David Hogg’s speech at the “March for Our Lives” in Washington, D.C., over the weekend was that he affixed a price tag on the microphone to symbolize how much National Rifle Association money Senator Marco Rubio took for the lives of students in Florida.

The stunt wasn’t out of place. Indeed, it perfectly encapsulated the braying spirit of the student gun-control advocacy in the wake of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting.

These young activists are making our public debate even more poisonous and less civil, and are doing it as teenagers. They are precocious that way.

The Stoneman Douglas students experienced a horrific trauma. No one can deny their grief or blame them for being impassioned. And allowance has to be made for the fact that they are teenagers, who universally believe that they know better than their hapless elders (Hogg says the problem is that their parents don’t know how to use a democracy).

Yet none of that excuses their scurrilous smears of the other side in the gun debate. The student activists presume that there is a ready solution to mass shootings that everyone knows, and the only reason why someone might not act on this universally accepted policy is malice or corruption. This makes the other side the equivalent of murderers.

Bernie Sanders, Michael Moore and Elizabeth Warren, three lefty millionaires, got together to solve “income inequality” in a town hall broadcast live from the Capitol visitors center.

Washington D.C., where two out of the three parasites do business, has the worst income inequality in the country. The bottom fifth of Washington D.C. account for just 2% of the city’s income. It has one of the highest poverty rates in the country and the highest food stamp use. And under Obama, the Imperial City of the politicians and the poor was surrounded by some of the wealthiest districts in the country.

“Income Inequality in America: The Rise of Oligarchy and Collapse of the Middle Class,” the Sanders, Warren and Moore town hall, comes to progs from the most unequal and oligarchic city in America

If Bernie, Liz and Michael really want to see income inequality, they can take a walk away from the marble and glass edifices of big government to see what big government had wrought. It isn’t any of their usual villains, the corporations and banks, who made Washington D.C. so miserable.

It’s the triumph of socialism.

Washington D.C. and its bedroom communities are what the entire country would look like if the left got its way. A socialist apartheid state divided between the business of government and the poor.

But the three socialist stooges aren’t just in the business of politics. They’re millionaire poverty pimps.

Bernie Sanders made over $1 million pushing conspiracy theories about income inequality. Denouncing big business let him rent a private Delta 767 with a menu of herb crusted lamb loin, chocolate ganache and fine cheeses. The Sanders clan is up to 3 homes now and Bernie is using his clout to get two of his kids elected to political offices. Who better to lecture us on the “Rise of Oligarchy” than an oligarch?

Double standards are a way of life in Washington, but they can still manage to take you aback. Witness the different standards applied to the recent punishments of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired Mr. McCabe on March 16, acting on the recommendation of career employees in the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility. That followed Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s finding that Mr. McCabe made an unauthorized disclosure to the media about the Hillary Clinton server investigation, but more importantly lacked candor under oath with internal investigators.

Democrats and various media voices described the McCabe firing as vindictive, because it disqualified the former agency No. 2 for early retirement benefits and came amid Donald Trump’s crass attacks on Mr. McCabe.

On Friday Mr. McCabe defended his conduct in the Washington Post. “Amid the chaos that surrounded me,” Mr. McCabe wrote, “I answered questions as completely and accurately as I could. And when I realized that some of my answers were not fully accurate or may have been misunderstood, I took the initiative to correct them.” He says he “may well have been confused and distracted.”

The country will have to wait for Inspector General Horowitz’s report to judge this claim. What we do know is that federal law has a policy of zero tolerance toward anyone who makes false statements to the FBI—a felony charge with up to a five-year prison sentence. Presumably the critics would have preferred the Attorney General to hold Mr. McCabe to a lower standard than that for average citizens.

Compare the conventional wisdom after the McCabe firing to its efficient disposal of Michael Flynn. In January 2017, Mr. Flynn denied to the FBI that he had discussed Obama-era sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak prior to Mr. Trump’s inauguration. As incoming National Security Adviser, Mr. Flynn would have known the government was monitoring Mr. Kislyak’s phone, which makes it unlikely he’d intentionally lie.

He agreed to talk to the FBI’s agents with no counsel present. And in March 2017 former FBI Director James Comey told the House Intelligence Committee that the two agents who interviewed Mr. Flynn concluded he hadn’t lied but had forgotten exactly what he’d discussed.

Still, what he told the FBI was false, and in December Special Counsel Robert Mueller extracted a guilty plea from Mr. Flynn on the charge of lying to the FBI. There is reason to believe Mr. Flynn took the deal to end the threat of financial ruin, or the prosecution of his son, Michael, Jr. Be that as it may, it’s hard not to notice that in what is considered polite Washington society today, Mr. McCabe has been elevated as a martyr to the anti-Trump cause, while Mr. Flynn’s fall is necessary justice.

No one knows where the Mueller investigation is going to end up. But the country would be better able to absorb the result if it believed that Washington was playing it straight, and not playing favorites.