Igros Moshe (E.H. 4:14) Avoiding marrying a woman over concerns that she is a bas nida as her parents are not observant Jews, even though she is modest and a good person is G-d fearing and loves Torah,. The Rambam (Issuei biah 15) and Shulchan Aruch (E.H. 4:13) state that the child of a nida is blemished but is not a mamzer. All the commentaries state that the child is fit to marry even a cohen but the problem is he is blemished and therefore best to avoid. Therefore the question is whether to avoid marrying them because of this blemish? In particular this woman even though she is modest and a good person and refined and apparently has overcome the spiritual damage - that perhaps her chidren will be bad. However it is also possible that the mother was not actually a nida because she mght have gone swimming in a lake - and even a bathing suit does not prevent her from becoming purified. Furthermore our Sages (Kallah) Rambam and Shulchan Aruch described the blemish of ben nida as being bad personality traits such as brazzeness. And even though we have authorities that a mamzer is a brazen person, we don’t rely on that to say that if the person is not brazen he can’t be a mamzer The Nachlas Yakov said that this just means if a person is brazen he should be suspected of being a mamzer and needs investigation. However since a ben nida is not prohibited to marry either by the Torah or rabbis it is possible to rely on the existence or absence of bad personality traits to determine whether she is a bas nida,and in this case with her good midos to assume she is not a bas nida and that the mother must have gone swinming in a body of water simiar to a mikve. Similary the son of sinners who is modest and refined can be assumed not to be a ben nida. .
Monday, December 14, 2020
Rav Sternbuch (5:313): Should a Ben Torah marry a bas Nida?
Rav Sternbuch (5:313): Should a Ben Torah marry a bas Nida? Regarding the status of bnei nida there is a dispute between the Taz and the Shach in Shulchan Aruch (Y,D.196:12). The Taz views it has a problem of yichus (pedigree) and is the result of a prohibited relationship while the Shach views that it causes the child to have a bad personality because of the spiritual impurity. I have already cited the view of the Chazon Ish said that Torah and mitzvos have the power to purify a person from this blemish and thus rise higher than a person borne in kedusha and is not a ben nida. Thus he and other major authorities actually ruled not like the Taz… It is possible to determine whether she has good midos and if so he should act quickly and not delay. So even though yichus is very important, it is not a reason to delay marriage. After getting engaged you should have minimal meetings with her prior to the wedding. You noted in your letter that a local rabbi advised you not to marry her for the sake of you families honor. In my opinion this is not a concern for the future, rather you should not delay for this reason because delaying might cause sin and damage your spirituality
Guide to Monday's Electoral College votes: How they work, how to watch and what comes next
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/guide-to-the-monday-electoral-college-vote
Monday's votes are the next step in the process of President-elect Joe Biden officially becoming the 46th president of the United States. They will inch the country closer to yet another peaceful transfer of power between presidents as the U.S. has done since the 1790s.
In tweets Sunday night, Trump appeared to be backtracking earlier reports that he would accept an adverse Electoral College result, saying, "THIS ELECTION IS UNDER PROTEST." But the mechanisms of the Constitution and its checks and balances continue to turn.
Vermont kicks off voting as first ballots cast in Monday's Electoral College meetings – live updates
Nearly six weeks after Americans voted Joe Biden the next president, the Electoral College is meeting Monday and will make President Donald Trump's electoral loss official
How Trump and Barr’s October Surprise Went Bust
Durham, who is the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut, and Dannehy were also troubled that Barr had purposely misrepresented their work in numerous public comments, the two people said. According to two sources familiar with the probe, there has been no evidence found, after 18 months of investigation, to support Barr’s claims that Trump was targeted by politically biased Obama officials to prevent his election. (The probe remains ongoing.) In fact, the sources said, the Durham investigation has so far uncovered no evidence of any wrongdoing by Biden or Barack Obama, or that they were even involved with the Russia investigation. There “was no evidence … not even remotely … indicating Obama or Biden did anything wrong,” as one person put it.
Electoral College set to seal Trump's fate -- yet again
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/14/politics/electoral-college-donald-trump-joe-biden/index.html
Veteran Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsberg told CNN's Ana Cabrera on Sunday that the blunt Supreme Court dismissals of Trump's cases were "the briefest and most summary of dismissals possible. That is a signal in lawyer talk about 'don't waste our time with these theories that you are spouting out.' "
Fox News has normalized a lie about the origins of the Russia investigation
https://www.vox.com/2019/3/22/18277089/fox-news-steele-dossier-lie-trump-witch-hunt
As America awaits special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report, Fox News has gotten in the habit of pushing a false talking point about the origins of his investigation — that it began after Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in 2016 alerted the FBI to the Steele dossier, an unverified intelligence document that contains a number of claims, some of them far-fetched, about the Trump campaign’s dealings with Russia.
“Keep in mind that all of this seemed to have started with this dossier that was essentially an oppo research paper funded by the Democrats, after the Republicans originally started it — dirt on Donald Trump,” Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy said on Friday.
Dossier Not What ‘Started All of This’
https://www.factcheck.org/2019/03/dossier-not-what-started-all-of-this/
But Ratcliffe is wrong to say the dossier “started all of this.” Competing memos from the Republicans and the Democrats on the House intelligence committee both say that information about George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, had prompted the FBI investigation in July 2016.
The Inside Story of Christopher Steele’s Trump Dossier
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-inside-story-of-christopher-steeles-trump-dossier
For nearly three years, President Trump has spun an alternate reality in which he was not helped and tainted by Russia during the 2016 Presidential campaign but, rather, his political opponents and his accusers were. During a rambling fifty-three-minute live phone interview with “Fox & Friends” on Friday, Trump insisted again that the plot to block his election and bring him down once he was installed in the White House was “perhaps the biggest scandal in the history of our country.”
Four in ten voters say Trump will go down as 'one of the worst presidents' in U.S. history as 58 per cent say they don't believe election was stolen
- Forty-two per cent of registered voters think Donald Trump will go down in history as one of America's worst presidents of all time, a new poll revealed
- Only 22 per cent say he will be remembered as one of the greats
- More than half of respondents said they don't think the election was stolen
- When broken down by party, however, 68 per cent of Republicans claim Trump was robbed of a second term in the election
Why Republican voters say there’s ‘no way in hell’ Trump lost
“If I’m being manipulated by Trump ... then he is the greatest con man that ever lived in America,” Caleb Fryar said. “I think he’s the greatest patriot that ever lived.”
Donald Trump's strange Mideast legacy
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/H1dWO873v
And of course, there is also the Palestinian issue. King Mohammed made a phone call to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah immediately after Trump tweeted about the establishment of new-old ties with Israel, making it clear that the two-state issue is dear to his heart. He was also careful not to make a similar call to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.