WOMEN ARE DOING IT FOR THEMSELVES: Inside a Secretive Group Where Women Are Branded.

Last March, five women gathered in a home near here to enter a secret sisterhood they were told was created to empower women.

To gain admission, they were required to give their recruiter — or “master,” as she was called — naked photographs or other compromising material and were warned that such “collateral” might be publicly released if the group’s existence were disclosed.

The women, in their 30s and 40s, belonged to a self-help organization called Nxivm, which is based in Albany and has chapters across the country, Canada and Mexico.

Sarah Edmondson, one of the participants, said she had been told she would get a small tattoo as part of the initiation. But she was not prepared for what came next.

Each woman was told to undress and lie on a massage table, while three others restrained her legs and shoulders. According to one of them, their “master,” a top Nxivm official named Lauren Salzman, instructed them to say: “Master, please brand me, it would be an honor.”

Good lord.

SPEED IS GOOD: Treatment timing critical for melanoma survival.

VIRTUAL TERROR: ISIS Puts Out Call for Supporters to ‘Fulfill the Call’ as Social Media Jihadists.

ROGER SIMON: Uranium One Means Mueller Must Recuse Himself from Russia Probe.

FASTER, PLEASE: Your Brain May Continue To Function After Your Death Long Enough For You To Be Aware Of It, Studies Suggest.

WELL, SLEEP DEPRIVATION, SEX DEPRIVATION, AND REDUCED TESTOSTERONE ISN’T A RECIPE FOR CHEERINESS: Can Fathers Have Postpartum Depression?

LAWYER: Obama DOJ Blocked FBI Informant from Talking about Uranium One Deal.

The corruption allegedly included bribery, kickbacks, extortion, money-laundering, and Russia getting 20% of our uranium against the better judgement of just about everybody.

D.C. Attorney Victoria Toensing, a former chief counsel of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is representing the informant, an American businessman who worked for years undercover as an FBI confidential witness.

Toensing said that when he attempted to bring some of the allegations to light in a lawsuit last year, “the Obama Justice Department threatened him with loss of freedom. They said they would bring a criminal case against him for violating an NDA.”

“The coverup is worse than the crime,” the press used to say.

And do read the whole thing.

QUIT OR FIRED? Chelsea Handler’s Netflix Show Canceled After 2 Seasons. “The streaming giant’s first talk show switched from daily to weekly in its second season and struggled to cut through the cluttered late-night space.”

“Like so many across the country, the past presidential election and the countless events that have unfolded since have galvanized me. From the national level down to the grassroots, it’s clear our decisions at the ballot box next year will mark a defining moment for our nation,” Handler wrote on Twitter. “For these reasons, I’ve decided not to return for another season of Chelsea, and instead devote as much time as I can to becoming a more knowledgeable and engaged citizen and to focus on projects that have significance to me. My goal is to be better informed, raise my voice, and participate in a more meaningful way. I want to travel the country and visit areas and people I don’t know enough about, speak at colleges and listen to students, and gain a better understanding of our political divide. I have joined forces with EMILY’s List to elect more women to public office, register people to vote, and campaign for candidates who are fighting for women’s rights.

I can’t imagine why people weren’t tuning in.

EVOLUTION IN ACTION: C-sections might be relaxing the evolutionary pressure against big babies.

KEMBERLEE KAYE: How “Me Too” Unfairly Maligns Men and Perpetuates Victimhood. “Whether intended or not, the end result is the blanket maligning of the entirety of maledom and the implication that everyone with a Y chromosome ought to repent for their original sin of being born male. It’s the ultimate man-shaming.”

AIDING AND ABETTING: L.A. Times: Harvey Weinstein is done. But what about Lisa Bloom?

TEXAS DEMOCRATS DILEMMA: If Not Mr. Leather, Then Whom?

WELL, I NEVER: UN’s “Sustainable Development Goals” report turns into another opportunity for America-bashing. Bjorn Lomborg:

The United States scores a surprising number of reds and yellows, ranking 42nd out of 157 countries overall. In fact, the US fails to achieve a single green ranking for any of the 17 SDGs, sharing this dubious honor with only Greece, Italy, Latvia, Mexico, Spain, and Turkey, among OECD nations. (War-torn Yemen, by contrast, scores green for both “Climate Action” and “Partnership for the Goals”.)

America-bashing is popular and easy. But US taxpayers do give nearly a quarter of all the money spent on direct development aid by rich countries. A report that gives the world’s biggest donor the lowest possible rating for “Partnerships for the Goals” would seem to have some underlying issues. (Myanmar, Uzbekistan, and Saudi Arabia all score green marks in this category.)

Of course, the UN’s approach is fatally flawed. As I said when the goals were launched in 2015:

The U.N.’s approach is flawed because it focuses on simply announcing a slew of targets that are unlikely to prove achievable, especially as there are tradeoffs involved in meeting some targets over others.

Moreover, the U.N.’s emphasis on “sustainability,” as generally defined among development bureaucrats and NGOs, imposes significant burdens on developing countries’ freedom and ability to achieve the rapid increases in human welfare that were the target of the original Millennium goals.

But a focus on “sustainability” does have the advantage of letting UN bureaucrats criticize their biggest funder. Incentives matter.

ANDY PUZDER: NFL could have prevented protest mess, as any competent employer would.

I ran the company that owns the Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s restaurant chains for almost 17 years. Along with our franchisees, we employed about 75,000 Americans and we flew the American flag in front of many of our restaurants. Had any company employees decided to disrespect that flag in front of our customers, in our brand’s uniform and during their hours of employment, I would have encouraged our general managers to first warn them to stop and, if they refused, to fire them.

I am very supportive of First Amendment rights and would encourage employees to express their opinions openly and freely, on their own time. But employees have no constitutional right to alienate a business’ customer base, damaging the business that employs both them and their co-workers, not to mention the owners who have taken the financial risks to create that business. When you accept employment, you accept the responsibility to advance the interests of the business that employs you. You have no right, nor should any employer tolerate attempts, to damage that business by alienating its customer base.

These kneeling player-employees have put their NFL team owners in a difficult spot. On the one hand, they certainly do not want players alienating their customers. On the other hand, team unity is important to a winning season and they naturally want to be sensitive to their players’ concerns. But, they never should have been put in this position.

Indeed. Roger Goodell will be remembered as the NFL Commissioner who squandered more goodwill, more quickly than anyone could have imagined.

VICTIM-BLAMING: Democrat Implies Women at Fault for Sexual Assaults: ‘That’s the responsibility, I think, of the female.’

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: President Trump’s Constructive Chaos: “Almost daily, President Trump manages to incense the media, alarm the world abroad, and enrage his Democratic opposition. Not since Ronald Reagan’s first year in office has change and disruption come so fast from the White House.”

HOLY ALLITERATION, BATMAN: This piece by the excellent Eric Boehm at Reason is very good for its content, but it wins a prize for its title – Loosening Looney Licensing Laws Likely to Lift Labor Force.

THE PURGE GOES ON: Turkey’s Erdogan Calls on Mayors to Resign.

The comments mark Erdogan’s most explicit demand yet for a shake-up of veteran politicians – some of whom are nationally prominent – after voters in many cities rejected an April referendum granting him sweeping power.

While Erdogan narrowly won the referendum to change the constitution and create an executive presidency, voters in 17 of Turkey’s 30 largest cities voted against the change. Since then, Erdogan has spoken of the need for renewal in local government and the ruling AK Party, citing signs of “metal fatigue” within administrations.

“People do not take these offices as independent candidates but as candidates shown by parties. We cannot regard these posts as chairs which are kept eternally and never abandoned,” the Hurriyet quoted him as telling reporters on his plane back from a trip to Poland this week.

“Get out — or else.”

CHANGE: Blue Apron is laying off hundreds of employees.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Scandals and Outrage Won’t End Sexual Harassment.

What comes across in the accounts of Weinstein’s behavior is certainly not a man who was unaware of the transgressive nature of his actions. Would Harvey Weinstein have green-lit a movie where the hero behaved like Harvey Weinstein? Of course not. Because he would have known that audiences would hate that man; you cannot be a successful moviemaker without an intimate understanding of your culture’s mores.

No, what you see in the allegations against Weinstein is not ignorance of right or wrong, but a man who seems to have enjoyed doing wrong things. Teaching such a man that something is not merely wrong, but really, really, really wrong may only increase his enjoyment.

Social norms can, and do, shift the penalties for that wrongness, especially when they foster legal change. Most companies these days are unwilling to keep most proven harassers around, because the law now opens up the company to huge liability if it does. But in industries that work on a star system — like media and sports — there are employees who bring in so much money that it would still be cheaper to pay off the victims than to lose the star.

This is especially true when you have no firm underlying moral code.

MARK MACKIE: Solving the Siege of Seoul.

As daunting as an evacuation of 10 million people may be, it is not unprecedented. About 14 million Chinese were evacuated from flooding in north China in 1998. In 1971, 18 million people moved from Bangladesh to India to escape Pakistan forces. In 2005, 3 million were evacuated in Texas and Louisiana due to Hurricane Rita.

Recently, the Russians appear to be evacuating 1,500 people from the northern North Korean border near Vladivostok. North Korea will wonder at a much larger companion action in the south letting the North Korean military know, even if the boss does not, that things have changed.

Seeing his hostage pool melt away may also concentrate the mind of the dictator himself. Simply an announcement of a planned evacuation may alter negotiating dynamics, and if implemented, the steady drip, drip drip of evacuees leaving Kim’s gunsights may get serious discussions for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula finally underway.

Read the whole thing.

WHEN IT GOES BEYOND CONFLICT OF INTEREST AND INTO FULL-BLOWN SCAM: The Clinton cover-up, brought to you by the same guys who are investigating Trump. It was obvious before that Mueller was hopelessly conflicted, but this goes well beyond that.

CATALONIA: Spain moves to suspend autonomy.

Article 155 of the constitution, which cemented democratic rule three years after the death of dictator General Francisco Franco in 1975, allows Madrid to impose direct rule in a crisis but it has never been invoked.

BBC Madrid correspondent Tom Burridge says that for Madrid this is about upholding the rule of law in Catalonia, protecting the Spanish constitution and disciplining what it sees as an unruly, disobedient devolved government.

However, the central government wants to minimise the risk of large-scale demonstrations, our correspondent says. Civil servants and government lawyers have thought long and hard about what measures to adopt and when and how they should be implemented.

If Madrid’s recent actions are anything to go by, implementation of Article 155 seems likely to be heavy-handed and maybe even self-defeating.