Monday, September 12, 2022
Why Barr is breaking from Trump — and the GOP — over Mar-a-Lago search
In an appearance on Fox on Thursday, Barr said he believes the Justice Department is “getting very close” to the point where they could indict someone in the case, including potentially Trump.
The comments were notable coming from a man who Democrats and some legal experts criticized throughout his latest tenure as attorney general, accusing him of viewing himself as the president’s lawyer rather than the country’s.
Agudath Israel Statement on New York Times’ Attack on Hasidic Community
https://agudah.org/agudath-israel-statement-on-new-york-times-attack-on-hasidic-community/
Agudath Israel of America decries today’s one-sided New York Times hit piece on New York State’s Hasidic community and its educational institutions.
The article is riddled with bias, ignoring the vast majority of Hasidic parents – those who cherish their yeshivas – instead citing a minority of people who have rejected the community’s values, and passing them off as representative of the whole. The true viewpoint of the tens of thousands of parents who send their children to Hasidic schools is represented, in part, by the recent historic 350,000 letters during the state’s public comment period, the vast majority of which pleading for no interference with the yeshiva educational system for which they pay and value. Could the New York Times not speak to one of those parents?
In precedent, rabbis send woman to jail for refusing divorce from her husband
Police officers, acting on the orders of a rabbinic court, on Sunday detained and imprisoned an Israeli woman for refusing to accept a divorce from her husband, in the first use of this punishment against a woman.
“It is rare. It is the first time that there’s incarceration. But the rabbinic court reached the decision that there was no other option,” Rabbi Eliyahu Maimon, the head of the department in the rabbinical courts that deals with divorce refusal, told The Times of Israel on Sunday.
According to Israel’s rabbinic court system, the woman has been refusing to accept a ritual divorce, known in Hebrew as a get, from her husband for four years, after he gained full custody of their two daughters following a prolonged battle in a civil family court.
Sunday, September 11, 2022
In Hasidic Enclaves, Failing Private Schools Flush With Public Money
https://www.userwalls.news/n/hasidic-enclaves-failing-yeshivas-flush-public-money-3800755/
לראשונה: סרבנית גט נשלחה למאסר
https://www.ynet.co.il/judaism/article/bjro3qxsls
בפעם הראשונה בתולדות בתי הדין הרבניים בישראל, אישה שמסרבת להתגרש מבעלה נשלחה לכלא. נשיא בית הדין הרבני הגדול הוציא נגדה פקודת מאסר, לאחר שבמשך ארבע שנים לא התייצבה לדיונים בעניינה ולא צייתה להחלטות בתיק. גם כשפרצו השוטרים לביתה, סירבה לקבל את הגט
Analyzing the New York Times Hatchet Job Against Yeshivos
The New York Times has written a one-sided attack against the Yeshiva and Torah community that is so filled with inaccuracies and half-stories that it is reminiscent of Tsarist-era attack on the great institutions of Volozhin and other Yeshivos, started by Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin – student of the Vilna Gaon.
Judge tosses Trump’s Russia probe suit against Clinton, FBI
A federal judge in Florida has dismissed Donald Trump’s lawsuit against 2016 Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and former top FBI officials, rejecting the former president’s claims that they and others acted in concert to concoct the Russia investigation that shadowed much of his administration.
U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks said in a sharply worded ruling on Thursday that Trump’s lawsuit, filed in March, contained “glaring structural deficiencies” and that many of the “characterizations of events are implausible.”
He dismissed the idea that Trump had sued to correct an actual legal harm, saying that “instead, he is seeking to flaunt a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him, and this Court is not the appropriate forum.”
Judge throws out Trump's lawsuit against Hillary Clinton
https://www.axios.com/2022/09/09/judge-dismisses-trump-lawsuit-clinton-2016
A U.S. judge has thrown out former President Trump's lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, saying the former president "is seeking to flaunt a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him."
Middlebrooks said Trump exceeded the legal statute of limitations and that "many of the statements that Plaintiff characterizes as injurious falsehoods qualify as speech plainly protected by the First Amendment."
"At its core, the problem with Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint is that Plaintiff is not attempting to seek redress for any legal harm," Middlebrooks wrote.
Trump-Appointed Judge’s ‘Originalist’ Claim Is Absurd
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-appointed-judge-aileen-cannons-originalist-claims-are-absurd
Now, avowed originalist Judge Cannon, installed during the waning days of the Trump administration, has engaged in one of the most audacious acts of right wing judicial overreach to date: Directly interfering with the current president’s performance of his core, constitutionally assigned, duties to protect national security and enforce the criminal laws enacted by Congress. It is hard to imagine a more brazen act of judicial supremacy.
What the Truth Social Flop Says About Trump
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/09/10/truth-social-flop-says-about-trump-00055977
Nothing about Truth Social’s disastrous beginnings should surprise us. Donald Trump has proved himself again and again to be a wreck of an entrepreneur. Steaks, his university, water, an airline, casinos, the USFL, a mortgage company, vodka — the list reads like a guide on how not to succeed in business. Associating Trump with a new venture has become a business death wish.
Trump is still the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 and could well wind up in the White House (assuming he’s not behind bars). But there’s also evidence that Trump has simply exhausted the Trump meme he invented. Trump’s deranged outrage style once contained real entertainment value — which explains why moderates and liberals followed him on Twitter even if they wouldn’t vote for him. But in his post-presidency and especially in the weeks following the Mar-a-Lago search and investigation, the show has gone stale. Vainly, he has sought to top himself by sharing QAnon-related material on Truth Social, denouncing the FBI like a madman trapped in a bunker, and calling for his reinstatement as the “rightful winner“ of the 2020 election. He’s become a carnival geek biting the heads off of snakes, which can be a fabulous show the first couple of times you see it, but after that, meh. Could today’s Trump devise enough fresh outrage to produce even a brief TikTok?
Russia Sees 'Major Defeat,' Ukraine Has 'Already Won': Ex-Military Leader
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-sees-major-defeat-ukraine-has-already-won-ex-military-leader-1741804
Igor Girkin, a former commander of pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine, said on Saturday that Ukrainian troops have "already won" the war against Russia.
On Saturday, Ukrainian troops made significant gains near Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine—forcing Russia to retreat from key cities including Izium and Kupyansk, according to Radio Free Europe
Shituf
Ramban (Shemos 20:3) The verse here thus states that excepting the Eternal only, we are not to have others as gods, neither from all the angels above nor from all the host of heaven who are called elohim. This is something like that which is said, he that sacrificeth ‘la’elohim’ (unto the gods) save unto the Eternal only, shall be utterly destroyed.. It is thus a prohibition against believing in any of these beings, accepting them as gods, or saying to them, “thou art my god. This is also the opinion of Onkelos, who translated: “[thou shalt have no] other gods excepting Me....” Thus the purport of the verse here is: “Do not make other gods unto yourselves, for I am present with you always and see you in private and in public.”
Orthodox Leaders Warn NY Times Against Publishing ‘False and Defamatory’ Article About Yeshivas
According to a summary of the article emailed by the Times reporters to the yeshivas and obtained by Hamodia, the article will allege that “students in these schools are deprived of [secular] education unlike students anywhere else in New York,” that students are these yeshivas perform poorly on standardized tests, the schools receive “enormous sums of public money,” and that “many religion teachers use severe corporal punishment.”