Zwiebel said that the
organization still opposes a broad opening of the statute of limitations
for civil cases. “We have always explained that our concern was for the
viability of yeshivas and shuls and summer camps,” Zwiebel said. “We
have said that to open up old claims in situations where it could even
be that the administration has turned over five times since the incident
has occurred… we’re opposed to that.”Read more: https://forward.com/news/362747/has-ultra-orthodox-group-agudath-israel-changed-its-tune-on-sex-abuse-lawsu/
Zwiebel said that the
organization still opposes a broad opening of the statute of limitations
for civil cases. “We have always explained that our concern was for the
viability of yeshivas and shuls and summer camps,” Zwiebel said. “We
have said that to open up old claims in situations where it could even
be that the administration has turned over five times since the incident
has occurred… we’re opposed to that.”Read more: https://forward.com/news/362747/has-ultra-orthodox-group-agudath-israel-changed-its-tune-on-sex-abuse-lawsu/
Zwiebel said that the
organization still opposes a broad opening of the statute of limitations
for civil cases. “We have always explained that our concern was for the
viability of yeshivas and shuls and summer camps,” Zwiebel said. “We
have said that to open up old claims in situations where it could even
be that the administration has turned over five times since the incident
has occurred… we’re opposed to that.”
According to its 2011 statement, Agudah’s ancillary concern is the
financial trauma that schools and synagogues would suffer in the event
of successful lawsuits brought against sexual predators and the
institutions that tolerate them. As Rabbi Shafran wrote, “What Agudath
Israel and Torah Umesorah [an Orthodox Jewish organization promoting
Torah-based religious studies] must object to… is legislation that could
literally destroy schools and houses of worship… Legislation that would
do away with the statute of limitations completely, even if only for a
one-year period, could subject schools and other vital institutions to
ancient claims and capricious litigation, and place their existence in
severe jeopardy.”
(Agudath Israel), Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, the Sultans of Self-Pity - Grifters gonna grift for their own self-preservation - Victims be damned!
Move over, Alec Baldwin. Bill Clinton does a much better impersonation of Donald Trump.
The
hair is wrong but the air is right — self-righteous, self-pitying and
suffused with anger that anyone would peddle a version of events less
heroic than the one that he prefers. We’re shaming him about ancient
groping when we should be showering him with eternal gratitude. And what
about his pain?
“I
left the White House $16 million in debt,” Clinton said in an interview
that NBC’s “Today” aired on Monday, batting back questions about
whether he had demonstrated sufficient contrition for converting a
22-year-old’s romantic idolization of him into sexual favors and setting
off a sequence of events that savaged her. I don’t know what legal
bills have to do with a moral ledger. But I can see that his fixations
on money and martyrdom are intact.
Before
cries of “false equivalence” shatter windows and startle forest
creatures, I should make clear that I’d take Clinton over Trump in any
role on any day. Trump is the Everest of delusion and depravity; Clinton
ascended only a bit beyond base camp.
But
at an honor-starved moment when most of our politicians are quicker to
shirk responsibility than to shoulder it, I cringe at his evasions,
elisions and rationalizations. Is he taking a cue from Trump or showing
us where Trump got some of his moves and inspiration?
Granted,
Clinton is venturing in front of cameras this week to discuss a book he
wrote, not the book on him. So he’s frustrated and flustered.
And
at 71, he’s not the talker or the actor that he used to be. Those eyes
don’t mist as wetly. That lower lip isn’t as ripe for penitential
chewing.
But hasn’t he or anyone
around him, in response to the #MeToo movement, thought to prepare a
script in which he says something brave and healing about his own
mistakes, the lessons he learned and how all of us can apply and benefit
from them?
He’s correct that he has
gone through the motions of saying that he’s sorry for the Monica
Lewinsky scandal before. But that preceded the fall of Harvey Weinstein,
the recognition of sexual misconduct’s pervasiveness and the damning
circus of Trump, whose allergy to apology gives Clinton a chance to
model a more generous, better way. He sure as hell isn’t seizing it.
He
grows visibly annoyed when journalists are so petty as to bring up the
past and the pesky fact that he’s one of only two American presidents
ever impeached. He raged when Craig Melvin of NBC News breached this
territory. And he promptly turned into Trump.
He
pointed fingers elsewhere, excusing his own erotic exploits by
insinuating that his Oval Office forebears were no less randy. “Do you
think President Kennedy should have resigned?” he challenged Melvin. “Do
you believe President Johnson should have resigned?” Give Clinton a
break. He was merely playing follow the libido.
He
cited polls, outsourcing discernment and judgment to the crowds.
“Two-thirds of the American people sided with me,” he told Melvin. They
thought that Republicans’ impeachment of him went too far. But that
doesn’t mean that he’s innocent — or virtuous.
He accused Melvin of sloppy journalism, though there wasn’t a scintilla of sloppiness in the portion of the interview that “Today” shared. “You, typically, have ignored gaping facts,” he said. I myself gaped — at the Trumpian magnitude of Clinton’s ire.
Those
ignored facts were the most ignoble part of his rant. He mentioned how
many women he had put in top jobs, presenting the roll call as a
counterweight to — or absolution for? — the infidelities, the
accusations of sexual harassment and Juanita Broaddrick’s claim of rape. Does Madeleine Albright’s ascent redeem Monica Lewinsky’s evisceration? Was Janet Reno a get-out-of-jail-free card?
What
a queasy-making calculus. And what foreshadowing. Decades before many
of Trump’s enablers edited out huge chunks of his behavior to rally
around his policies, many of Clinton’s fans made a similar if less
egregious bargain.
The Venn diagram
of the 42nd and 45th presidents overlaps not only where hormones rage
but also where entitlement roars. And that entitlement is antithetical
to a world in which women get the respect and equality that they deserve
and Americans get the leadership that we sorely need.
Clinton’s
new book, a thriller written with James Patterson, is called “The
President Is Missing.” That could also be a title for his book tour —
and for a real-time chronicle of the Trump administration. If the
president is supposed to be someone more focused on his obligations than
on his reputation, on his duty than on his due, then we lack one now,
and Clinton isn’t filling the void.
He’s warbling a tune that we’re sick and tired of. Woe is him. Woe is Trump.
I’d tweak the lyrics. Woe is us.