Thursday, February 12, 2026
US to Expand Passport Revocations for Parents Who Owe Child Support
While passport revocations for unpaid child support of more than $2,500 have been permitted under 1996 federal legislation, the State Department had in the past acted only when someone applied to renew their travel document or sought other consular services. In other words, enforcement depended on the person approaching the department for assistance.
Starting soon, however, the department will begin to revoke passports on its own initiative based on data shared with it by the Health and Human Services Department, according to the U.S. officials familiar with the plan. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the change has not yet been publicly announced.
The number of people who could be affected was not immediately clear, but it is believed to be in the thousands. Because of the potentially large universe of those owing child support who currently hold passports, the State Department will make the change in tiers, the officials said.
The first group to be affected will be passport holders who owe more than $100,000 in past-due child support, the officials said. One of the officials said fewer than 500 people meet that threshold and could avoid having their passport revoked if they enter into a payment plan with HHS after being notified of the pending revocation.
The official acknowledged, though, that if and when the threshold is lowered to a smaller past-due amount, the number of those affected will rise significantly. The official could not say when any further changes would take effect or estimate how many people might then lose their passports.
Since the Passport Denial Program began with the 1996 passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, the initiative has taken in nearly $621 million in past-due child support payments, with nine collections of more than $300,000, according to the Office of Child Support Enforcement at the Department of Health and Human Services.
HHS did not respond to questions about how many people are in arrears, instead referring the AP to the State Department. The State Department did not immediately respond to a query about the move.
People Wondering Why Rav Landau Needs Notes for a Simple Message??
People wonder why a Gadol would need written notes for such a simple message, and the reason is straightforward: most people don’t understand what’s actually happening.
Why would a Rosh Yeshiva, someone who knows Kol HaTorah Kula, require notes to deliver a message that even a young child could articulate? The answer is simple—he is relying entirely on the information provided to him by those around him. As far as I know, Rav Landau doesn’t follow the news and isn’t on social media. Everything he hears comes through his handlers, the askanim who filter and frame the information he receives.
A clear example took place in 2023, six months after October 7th, during the Beit Shemesh mayoral election. Certain Charedi factions were determined to remove Dr. Aliza Bloch, a Shomeret Torah U’mitzvot, and put forward their own candidate, Shmuel Greenberg—who, ironically, they later turned against to the point that he now requires heavy security just to leave his home.
To rally support, they rented a stadium—despite previously insisting that entering such a venue was forbidden—and managed to gather nearly 4,000 people for a Degel HaTorah event. On a Motzei Shabbos, they brought the elderly Rav Landau from Bnei Brak so he could address the crowd. I was there.
Rav Landau spoke for about five minutes, reading from notes. And what was the message?
He declared that this municipal election constituted a “Milchemes Mitzvah.” Therefore, he said, eligible bochurim should close their Gemaras and vote. If they were learning outside Beit Shemesh, Degel would provide buses so they could travel back and forth—a trip that would involve at least five hours of missed learning—all because this was supposedly a “Milchemes Mitzvah.”
This took place during a period of daily IDF casualties, constant sirens and runs to shelters, only months after October 7th. Yet according to this logic, the events of October 7th were not a Milchemes Mitzvah, but voting in a local mayoral race was. It’s hard to make sense of that.
And this brings us back to the original question: why did Rav Landau need notes for a five‑minute speech?
Because he was reading what others prepared for him. That’s the entire point.
The ones mocking Rav Landau are the Chareidim themselves who are afraid what he would say if he didn't have the notes! They think that he is basically a "dummy" and so they feed him crapola and hay and place it in a note for him to read!
זו תורה וזו שכרה
CNN Black reporters Believe Blacks are too Dumb to have Voter ID
Scott Jennings ignites CHAOS on CNN when he asks “how” the SAVE Act strips voting rights from people of color.
— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) February 12, 2026
ALENCIA JOHNSON: “[Trump] is championing a bill that would take voting rights away from a lot of black people in this country.”
JENNINGS: “Wait, what voting rights is… pic.twitter.com/MDW4YMV4Bd
UN Secretary-General António Guterres Congratulates Iran on Anniversary Of Iran Islamic Revolution
This is vile and disgusting.
— Goldie Ghamari | گلسا قمری 🇮🇷 (@gghamari) February 11, 2026
This is the equivalent of congratulating the Nazis on the anniversary of them taking over Germany.
Shame on the UN.
DEFUND THE UN pic.twitter.com/cTVdV8Giwi
Renting your life: The hidden tax of the digital cloud
If you ask your grandma what a cloud is, she will tell you that it’s a white and fluffy thing in the sky. In the tech world, too, the cloud is a great concept: You can upload your pictures to a big cloud castle in the sky that keeps them nice and safe. Always there, ready for you whenever and wherever you need it.
I love to rely on the cloud. It gives peace of mind to believe that someone is taking care of my most personal information, without having to worry about backing up a disk.
When we start using a cloud, we click accept and start using its convenience for free, but one day, we receive a ransom note (an email) saying that our storage is full. Either we keep paying monthly to keep both the space and the access to our data available. Or we don’t pay, and our access to our most sensitive and valuable data gets restricted. We don’t just lose the service of storing our images, we lose the access to our memories, our records, our work… The bubble pops and we understand the reality of the cloud: It’s huge warehouses, somewhere far away, in a cold place that will keep the computers from overheating.
Eventually, we pay and start renting our life back. The only way we can access our own data is through a middleman and a monthly fee. The relationship between us and the company changes. Suddenly, they are holding our personal data, and we have to pay our way back.
By uploading our photos to the cloud, we are handing over the sovereignty of our data to a company. Google, Amazon and Microsoft (“the big three”) currently hold around 63% of the market share of cloud infrastructure, and when we use them, we trust them blindly.
These companies are not just “renting out” their storage space for normal consumers. When we use clouds, they double tax us. They earn from our subscription fees, and also from using our data to improve their algorithms, their AI models, etc. (Some companies say that they “anonymize” personal data, but there is no way of knowing.) Their business improves, and they earn even more. In Scott Galloway’s Book “The Four,” he argues that the big tech companies “[…] are in a race to become the operating system for our lives. The prize? A frictionless existence that we pay for with our data, our privacy, and eventually, our agency.”
In November 2025, Amazon and Google announced that their cloud services were starting an Interconnect partnership. It was marketed as a victory for “multi-cloud” convenience, but by linking their infrastructures, these giants have ensured that our data stays within their combined ecosystems. The partnership will make it even harder for us to track who really has access to our data and to withdraw it.
We can argue that clouds are similar to banks. They keep our valuables safe, and they use them for their own investments, right?
In October, an eight-hour outage of the Amazon Cloud services (AWS) affected more than 17 million users across more than 60 countries, according to Ookla Research, costing companies across the US millions of dollars.If banks lose your money, you are protected through deposit insurance.When data gets lost by a cloud, there’s no way to recover it – it’s gone.If we want to switch banks, we can close our account and go to another one.
But “data gravity” prevents us from simply exiting the cloud. As the amount of our data on the cloud grows, it pulls us deeper into the company’s convenient ecosystem. From there, it’s a spiral. The more data you have, the more convenient the cloud is and the harder it is to leave.Removing your data becomes a technical difficulty.
This data concentration on a few tech giants has given them more power than some countries have. They can change the terms of service and raise prices. We, the users, have nowhere else to go, because when it comes to handling digital data, there aren’t enough laws to protect us. We might think that we know how to use these tools, but we can only see the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how the companies use our data.
In December 2025, Time magazine named “Architects of AI” as the person of the year. If we want to keep using advanced tech in 2026, we need to look further than convenience. We need to find solutions that we believe in, to escape the spider web of data. By installing a home cloud — storage we control — we can take back the power from the companies and return to being the true owners of our data. We can take back our sovereignty over our own digital life.
Wednesday, February 11, 2026
Charedie Torah Leaders Quiet While One of Their Own The Stoliner Rebbe is Under Attack!
DIN: The article below I copied and pasted from Mazav.com! Know that they are a bunch of liars!
They write at the end of the article:
"Across the chassidic world and beyond, strong condemnations were voiced over what many described as a severe affront to kavod haTorah."
This last two lines is a unfiltered unmitigated lie! I have not read in any Chardeie publication that anyone condemned this !
An extremist was detained after allegedly planning to spray pepper spray at the Stoliner Rebbe, according to sources on Monday, following a separate incident earlier in the day in which radical protesters publicly harassed the rebbe.
Journalist Yoeli Brim reported that a zealot was apprehended while carrying pepper spray that he intended to use against the Stoliner Rebbe. According to the report, police later released the suspect and did not confiscate the pepper spray.
Earlier in the morning, a group of extremists from the fringes of the chareidi community confronted and humiliated the Stoliner Rebbe as he arrived in the Gush Shemonim area to attend a bris for the son of one of his chassidim.
The protesters, who oppose the Rebbe’s involvement in efforts to arrange adapted military service frameworks for the chareidi public, lay in wait for him and vandalized his vehicle by throwing eggs, ketchup, and other objects at it.
The Rebbe himself was not harmed in the attack, though visible damage was caused to his car, as seen in the photo above obtained by Matzav.com.
Despite the incident, the Rebbe instructed his chassidim—consistent with his long-standing approach over decades—to remain silent and not respond in any way to the provocations.
Across the chassidic world and beyond, strong condemnations were voiced over what many described as a severe affront to kavod haTorah.
I am one of the 'idiots' who say Hallel on Yom Ha'atzmaut
DIN: Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, the former Israel Chief Sefardi Rabbi, stated that people who recite Hallel on Yom Ha'atzmaut (Israel Independence Day) are idiots. Without going into this debate, I just want to point out that Rav Yosef is not the sharpest blade in the drawer and people shouldn't get all worked up about what he says!
In Yiddish there is a great expression and its impossible to translate:
ער איז נישט א גרויסיר חכם אין נישט א קליינער נער
by Tzvi Fishman
I am an idiot. Why am I an idiot? Because I recite the Hallel prayer of thanksgiving on Israel Independence Day. Why does that make me an idiot?
According to a report published in Israel National News, Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef stated that people who recite Hallel on Yom Ha'atzmaut (Israel Independence Day) are idiots. (The correct translation is "are stupid," ed] The article reported remarks which Rabbi Yosef made concerning the aggressive opposition of the Israel Police toward haredim during protests against the drafting of yeshiva students.
At the end of his remarks against the police and the Israel Government, the former Israel Chief Sefardi Rabbi and a spiritual leader of the Shas Party criticized the practice of saying the Hallel prayer on Israel's Independence Day, saying,
"We are in exile. How can you say Hallel on Independence Day? One of the Mizrachi people (i.e. Religious Zionists, ed.) told me he says Hallel on Independence Day. What is there to say Hallel on Independence Day for? For the beatings from the police? For the arrests? For the mixed swimming pools? For the mixed beaches? For the secular education? They tell me 'No, we have a country.' Idiots."
While it is not pleasant to be called stupid, I am in good company.
Shin Bet Escorts Reporter Off Israeli PM Netanyahu’s Plane in Last-Minute Security Move
An unusual incident took place today (Tuesday) at the airport when Nick Kolyohin, an Israeli-Russian independent journalist, was removed from Prime Minister Netanyahu's flight, which was headed to Washington for a meeting with US President Donald Trump.
Kolyohin, who was part of the press delegation invited to visit the White House, was preparing to board the "Wing of Zion" plane but was detained and removed just minutes before takeoff.
The journalist, who immigrated to Israel as a child and served in the IDF, claims that the decision to remove him was made solely by security officials, and that he was not given any information about the reason for his removal from the plane, even though his participation had been previously approved.
The Prime Minister's Office stated: "The security authorities decided not to approve the journalist’s participation in the flight due to security considerations, but we cannot provide further details at this stage."
The Shin Bet stated: "According to its mandate and duties under the law, the service is responsible, among other things, for securing the Prime Minister. As part of this, decisions are made to minimize risks to the Prime Minister and the information surrounding him. Naturally, it is not possible to address the reasons behind individual decisions."
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