Democrats planning to unveil bill that would add 4 justices to Supreme Court

 

Democrats are preparing to unveil legislation that would add four seats to the US Supreme Court. 

The bill, first reported by The Intercept, is expected to be introduced in both the House and Senate on Thursday.

It would up the number of seats on the high court to 13 from the current nine.

Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, a co-sponsor of the bill, told The Wall Street Journal that adding justices “will shore up the public’s confidence in the court and its legitimacy in the public’s eyes.”

Also backing the measure are House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler (NY-10th District) Subcommittee Chair Hank Johnson (GA-4th District), and freshman New York Rep. Mondaire Jones.

The sponsors will announce the proposal at a press conference Thursday morning on the steps of the court, where they will be joined by activists from liberal groups including Take Back The Court, which has advocated for increasing the number of justices. 

“Our democracy is under assault, and the Supreme Court has dealt the sharpest blows. To restore power to the people, we must #ExpandTheCourt,” Jones wrote on Twitter.

Conservatives currently hold the majority on the bench after former President Donald Trump’s appointment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal icon.

It is believed Barrett — Trump’s third nomination to the court —  will cement the conservative tilt for decades, prompting calls from Democrats to increase the number of justices, who have lifetime appointments.

President Biden on Friday signed an executive order creating a commission that would study the “pros and cons” of expanding the court.

But Markey said that, “We need more than a commission to restore integrity to the court.”

Republicans and legal purists decry the idea as “court-packing” and say it will undo the court’s historical insulation from politics.

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican, blasted the Dems’ proposal, saying that “Packing the Supreme Court would destroy the Supreme Court.” 

“The Democrats will do anything for power,” he wrote on Twitter.

“The moderate left is gone,” said President Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows. 

“This is who they are now. Open borders. Outlawing voter ID. Free healthcare for illegal migrants. And now court packing. This should be roundly rejected.”

Biden previously opposed adding seats.

Congress altered the number of justices on the court several times over the 19th Century from a low of five to a high of 10. The number was fixed at nine shortly after the Civil War.

In the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt unsuccessfully sought to expand the court after conservative justices ruled against some of his New Deal policies.

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Yom Hazikaron: Remembering My Brother Keeps Him Alive

 

Hillel Schwartz by the grave of his brother, Ezra Schwartz, who was killed in a Palestinian terror attack in Israel on Nov. 19, 2015

 For me, every day is Yom Hazikaron. Since I lost my older brother, Ezra, to a terrorist attack on Nov. 19, 2015, not a day has gone by that I do not think about him.

I remember Ezra every time my little brothers and I watch a Patriots or Yankees game, his most beloved teams. I see his infectious smile every time I step out of my comfort zone to reach out to someone new. And I laugh at his antics every Friday night when my family reads from the letters we received after his death, and we learn about how he choked down hot peppers on the camp bus or made ridiculous music videos in his bunkhouse at two in the morning.

His tragedy resonates with almost all who hear it. A Palestinian terrorist opened fire from inside a vehicle near the Etzion Junction in the West Bank, killing Ezra, along with an Israeli teacher and a Palestinian bystander. Ezra was studying as part of a gap-year program at a yeshivah in Beit Shemesh, and that day was on his way to deliver snacks to Israeli soldiers stationed near Efrat when he was shot. He was just 18 and preparing to attend Rutgers University after his year in the Jewish state.

When Ezra was killed, the entire Jewish community supported my family. There was so much sadness around the world. Everyone wanted to help us. We received condolence cards and letters from Ezra’s friends and acquaintances describing their interactions with him. Our friends carried us through those first few months. Strangers sent Hanukkah gifts. We felt honored to be Ezra’s family. In the midst of my tragedy, I felt so loved.

But for most Jews outside of our community of Sharon, Mass., south of Boston, Ezra’s impact has faded with time. Yom Hazikaron is a day for these Jews to remember their loss and rekindle the closeness the nation felt in the aftermath of his death. It’s a day to perpetuate the memory of my brother and everyone else who died for Israel.

But more than that, Yom Hazikaron is a day for my family and those like ours to realize that our loved ones have not been forgotten by world Jewry. Every mention of Ezra’s name brings us a bit of healing. It lets us know that we are not alone, that people still care. It even goes a little way towards bringing Ezra back to us. Every time someone does something in his memory, it shows us that even though he’s not here with us on earth, he is not totally gone; he is still with us, affecting our lives.

I have participated in communal Yom Hazikaron ceremonies ever since my brother’s death. But this year’s Masa Israel Journey ceremony was a new experience. For the first time, I was helping Ezra be remembered not by people who knew and loved him, but by thousands around the world who had never met him or even heard of him.

Ezra on far right with his siblings

Once in a while, I wonder whether Ezra’s repeated mention really makes a difference. But then I see the impact his story has on each new person who hears it—and I realize that if Ezra can change even one more life, it is all worth it. At the filming of this year’s Masa Israel Journey ceremony, I was sitting next to a man and a woman from another Masa program. This may have been their first time in Israel. I looked a little different than most of the wreath-holders, so they asked about my story. I told them about Ezra—and I could see their faces change. One of them started crying. Most of the people I encounter already know about my family’s experience, so I seldom have the chance to see how my brother’s story can move those hearing it for the first time. Each reading of Ezra’s name gives new people the opportunity to look him up, read about him and be inspired by something he did.

I am now nearing the completion of my year in Israel, an opportunity my brother never had. He will never attend Rutgers, start a career or build his own family. But as long as people remember him, Ezra will never truly be gone. He will live on in our stories, in our actions and in the children who bear his name.

This Yom Hazikaron, please take a minute to think of my brother. Read a story about him and maybe even do something in his merit. Ezra excelled at enjoying life and helping those around him. My family and I also encourage you to share your stories in Ezra’s memory with us, if you feel compelled to. In acts of kindness, you will be returning to him a bit of the life that was ripped from him, from my family and from the Jewish people.

Hillel Schwartz is the brother of Ezra Schwartz, an American victim of Palestinian terror in Israel in 2015.

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Inran Admits “1,000s Of Centrifuges Destroyed At Natanz,”

 

Thousands of centrifuges used to enrich uranium has been damaged or completely destroyed at the Natanz nuclear site, a senior Iranian official stated on Tuesday.

Alireza Zakani, the head of the Iranian parliament’s research center, detailed the damage incurred in the attack in an interview on state TV.

Zakani’s statement seems to confirm remarks by Channel 13 News analyst Alon Ben-David, who said that Iran’s provocative announcement that it will begin increasing uranium enrichment to up to 60% is “not a significant threat.”

Ben-David explained that due to the extensive damage at Natanz, Iran will not be able to reach 60% enrichment there and although it maintains about 1,000 additional centrifuges at its Fordo plant, those centrifuges can only enrich uranium up to 60% in very small quantities.

An increase of up to 60% uranium enrichment is significant since it is a short step away from weapons-grade uranium.

Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall, an expert on strategic issues with a focus on Iran, terrorism and the Middle East, and a senior analyst at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, told JNS on Monday that the attack caused years of work to “go down the drain.”

“This isn’t the first time that centrifuges in Natanz have crashed in one way or another,” Segall said. “I’m not sure how many cascades [a group of centrifuges working together to enrich uranium more quickly] were destroyed there, and it is not clear what happened, but when a cascade breaks, this represents years of work that go down the drain.”

Segall also spoke about the political repercussions of the multiple attacks [attributed to Israel] on Iran’s “top-secret” sites, with Iranians mocking the regime on social media for being unable to protect its most critical assets.

“The regime has been exposed,” he said. “As it continues to absorb attacks, there is a growing erosion in its perception by the Iranian people, and certainly, by the Iranian diaspora.”

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Watch Storekeeper Refuse Money From IDF Soldier on on Yom Zikaron

 

קיוסק שלא לוקח כסף ביום הזיכרון מחיילים, מדהים. pic.twitter.com/azCzctr25C

— אריאל אלחרר (@ariel_elharar_) April 14, 2021

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Bernie Madoff, whose Ponzi scheme devastated the Jewish world, dies in prison at 82

 

Bernie Madoff, the fraudster who ran a $17.5 billion Ponzi scheme ensnaring thousands of investors, including a long list of Jewish organizations and families, has died at 82.

The Associated Press reported Madoff’s death Wednesday at a federal prison in Butner, North Carolina.

Madoff was known as a selective money manager who made fantastic yet consistent profits for his clients until his entire operation was exposed as a scam amid the 2008 financial crisis. Madoff’s confession of his Ponzi scheme, in which he invented fake stock gains on paper and used new investments to pay off withdrawals from other investors, set off a virtual earthquake in the Jewish philanthropic world.

Among Madoff’s investors were European hedge funds, elderly retirees and a range of nonprofits. Among his victims were some of the most prominent Jewish institutions in the country, as well as Jewish celebrities like Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and Sandy Koufax, the Hall-of-Fame pitcher.

Madoff’s investors included Yeshiva University, elite Orthodox Jewish day schools in New York and Boston, Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, and other Jewish organizations and family foundations.

Many of those investors had met Madoff through the small world of Jewish philanthropy in New York and south Florida, and placed their money with his fund via friends of his such as Jeffrey Picower and J. Ezra Merkin, who operated hedge funds that invested heavily with Madoff. Merkin, a former president of the elite Fifth Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan, directed perhaps $1 billion of congregants’ money to Madoff, according to the New York Times.

So when Madoff, facing increasing pressure due to a national financial crisis, confessed his crime in 2008, the effects were felt across American Jewry. Following the confession, the Jewish Funders Network, which convenes Jewish donors, brought together 35 of the largest Jewish foundations to create a plan to provide emergency funding to some of Madoff’s victims.

Around that time, the Anti-Defamation League also documented an uptick in anti-Semitism that it concluded stemmed from the news of Madoff’s fraud.

The consequences of Madoff’s fraud have reverberated through the Jewish world for years. Some Madoff investors, such as Hadassah, had withdrawn more money than they invested over the years, and were subject to “clawback” suits in which they had to pay back the fictitious profits. While Madoff had claimed to be managing nearly $70 billion, most of that money (aside from what investors gave him) had never actually existed.

A trustee, Irving Picard, has spent the years since 2008 trying to recover the actual billions that Madoff stole. As of 2021, they had recovered and restituted more than $14 billion of the $17.5 billion Madoff took.

“They really felt that they had so much more money in their accounts,” Richard Greenfield, a lawyer who consulted for a handful of Madoff victims in Florida, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2018. “When they talk about their losses, they talk about the fictitious numbers in their accounts, and for some of them, it’s hard to explain: Your real loss wasn’t $200,000, it’s $10,000, which is what you put in.”

Madoff was born in 1938 in Queens, New York, and began working as a stockbroker in 1959. He married his wife, Ruth, that year and had two children. He originally made a name by investing in computerized stock trading in the NASDAQ market, and served as NASDAQ’s chairman.

He began managing private clients’ wealth in the 1970s. While he told Diana Henriques, who wrote a book about him, that the Ponzi scheme began in 1992, the federal prosecutor who led the criminal investigation of Madoff believes that Madoff started the scheme when he began his money-management business.

He collected accolades as his ostensible success grew. Madoff was named the treasurer of Yeshiva University, the flagship Modern Orthodox institution, and gained a reputation as a reserved but effective steward of Jewish organizational finances.

Then it abruptly ended. Madoff pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 150 years in federal prison. His two sons, whom he swore had no involvement in his fraud, predeceased him, one by suicide on the second anniversary of Madoff’s arrest.

In 2020, Madoff requested compassionate release from prison, telling the court he was dying from kidney disease. His request was denied.

He is survived by his wife, Ruth.

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My First Lesson In Zionism I Learned From The Kloizenberger Rebbe z"l

 

The most profound tragedy as well as the most uplifting confirmation of our faith were both experienced by the Jewish people within the very same decade of the last century: the shame of humanity that either cooperated with or silently permitted the decimation of the Jewish people and the diabolical atrocities of the Holocaust, and then- only three years after the suicide of Hitler - the newfound hope for humanity with the rebirth of the State of Israel confirmed by a vote in the United Nations.

To suggest that the Holocaust was the necessary price the Jews had to pay to return to their homeland after almost 2,000 years of destruction, exile and persecution, borders on the blasphemous.

However to overlook the inextricable juxtaposition of these two nationally defining events - the first bringing us down to the hellish depths of despair and the second raising us up to the dizzying heights of redemption- would be blinding oneself to the commanding voice of Jewish history. 

And so I begin this essay with my first lesson in Zionism, which emerged from the ashes of Auschwitz.

It was the Shabbas of the weekly portion Ki Tavo, toward the end of the summer of 1952. I had known that the Rebbe of Sanz-Klausenburg had taken over the Beth Moses Hospital, where he had built a very large Bais-Medrish  as well as a printing press to teach his disciples a trade, and I wanted to pray with the Chassidim that Shabbas morning.

When I arrived at the Bais-Medrish, I was amazed by the sea of black and white swaying figures that greeted my eyes, all newly immigrant Holocaust survivors. It was said about the Rebbe that although his wife and 13 children had been murdered, he had not sat shiva for any of them; he preached that those still alive must be saved with exit visas before one could be allowed the luxury of mourning for the dead. The Rebbe himself was among the last to leave Europe, insisting that the captain does not leave the sinking ship before its passengers.

I took a seat directly behind the Rebbe, who stood at his lectern facing the eastern wall and the Holy Ark, with his back to the congregation. The prayer was the most intense I had ever experienced, with no talking whatsoever, and chance individuals even bursting out in tears during varying parts of the service, apparently in response to a sudden association with painful memory.

Then the Torah reader began to chant the weekly portion. When he came to the passage known as the Tochecha, consisting of the curses that would befall the Israelites, he began to read (in accordance with the time-honoured custom) in a whisper and very quickly. 

A sound suddenly came from the place of the Rebbe; he said only one word: "Hecher, Louder."

The Torah reader immediately stopped reading, and seemed to hesitate for a few moments. I could almost hear him pondering. Did the Rebbe actually say "louder"? Would the Rebbe go against the custom of Jews in all congregations to chant the curses rapidly and in a barely audible voice? The reader apparently decided that he had been mistaken in what he thought the Rebbe had said, and continued reading in a whisper.

The Rebbe turned around to face the congregation, banged on the lectern, his eyes blazing:

"Ich hub gezugt hecher, I said louder," he shouted out. "Let the RBS"O hear! We have nothing to be afraid of. We have already received all of the curses- and more. Let the Almighty hear, and let Him understand that the time has come to send the blessings!"

I was trembling, my body bathed in sweat. Many people around me were silently sobbing. The Rebbe turned back to his lectern, facing the wall. The Torah reader continued to chant the curses loudly, and distinctively, and in a much slower cadence.

At the end of the additional prayers, after Aleinu, the Rebbe once again turned to his congregation, but this time with his eyes conveying deep love, 

"Mein tayere shevestern un brider, my beloved sisters and brothers, the blessings will come, but not from America. Indeed, G-d has promised the blessings after the curses, and He has already begun to fulfil His promise by bringing us home to Israel. May more blessings await us, but they will only come from Israel. Let us pack our bags for the last time. Our community is setting out for Kiryat Sanz, in Netanya, Israel."

Signed

Shlomo Riskin

Efrat

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Watch The Official Yom Hazikaron 2021 Ceremony on Har Hertzl

 

Starts at 5:32 mark

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On Yom Hazikaron We Remember the 146 U.S. citizens murdered and the more than 200 wounded by Palestinians

 Yom Hazikaron, observed today, is the day on which Israel remembers not only its fallen soldiers, but also civilians who were murdered by Arab terrorists. But there is one category of terror victims who, while technically included in that designation, have been almost completely forgotten—American victims of Palestinian Arab terrorism.

Since 1968, a total of 146 U.S. citizens have been murdered, and more than 200 wounded, in Palestinian Arab terrorist attacks. Most were tourists or college students spending a summer, six months, or a year of study in Israel—like my daughter, Alisa. Others were dual American-Israeli citizens living in Israel.

The parents of these victims reacted like Israeli parents do in the face of loss. They sit shiva for their children, siblings or parents, then go about putting one foot in front of the other trying to rebuild their shattered lives. Some of us try to participate in the on-going building of the State of Israel and move here. I did it; not because of Alisa’s murder but because of her life.

Obviously, in many respects there is no difference between a terror victim who was a citizen of one country and one who came from another country. What all of them have in common is that they were innocent targets of brutal savages.

Yet in several important respects, American victims are different.

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Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto Says Hitler Killed 6 Million Jews Because They Talked in Shul ... In Morocco they Didn't

 

Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto, head of the Jewish Court leaders in Morocco, slammed those who engage in idle talk in the synagogue and study hall, saying that such behavior is "horrifying and ruins everything."

The statements were made during the Tuesday night lecture at the Shuva Yisrael Yeshiva in Manhattan, when Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto wrote a letter in a Torah scroll and blessed the leaders of the Shomrim organization of Williamsburg.

"This is an enormous power and a great merit, not to speak during prayers. It is what holds up the world."

Regarding the coronavirus pandemic, he said: "The plague which we have been through is not simple. Since the splitting of the Red Sea, there was never such a thing as this, that G-d closed the entire world the way we had it now. These are signs that the Messiah is coming."

Rabbi Pinto also said that all of the Jews' significant troubles are caused by idle chatter in the synagogue.

"Torah sages have said that the Holocaust in Europe happened because they spoke during prayers. It did not come to Morocco, because we were careful not to speak during prayers," he explained. "Speaking during prayers is horrifying and destroys everything."

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Newly Elected MK Reform Rabbi Sneaks Sefer Torah into Kotel For Women ... He has MK immunity

 

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