"Bob Dylan and his lawyers are calling the sex abuse lawsuit filed against him in New York last summer a 'ludicrous' money grab by an unbalanced 'psychic' who once stated she had been 'abducted by aliens and piloted their spaceship....'"

"'According to her own website, plaintiff is a psychic who specializes in ‘channeling’ the deceased loved ones of grieving families — for a fee,' the new filing states. It alleges the accuser had not only claimed she had been abducted by aliens, she also purportedly claims that 'she speaks to cats, dogs and other animals — alive and dead — as well as insects and plants.'... [The plaintiff's lawyer said,] 'Some people refer to Bob Dylan as a prophet. People have labels. More than half of Americans believe in psychic phenomena. If you’re going to attack somebody for their beliefs, you’re encroaching upon very dangerous territory.... This is what this country is based on, freedom of beliefs. It shouldn’t divert our attention from the allegations. This case is about the facts.'"

From "Bob Dylan Brands Sex Abuse Lawsuit a ‘Brazen Shakedown’ by Unbalanced ‘Psychic’/'The allegation is false, malicious, reckless and defamatory,' Dylan’s lawyers said in a new response filed in state court in Manhattan" (Rolling Stone).

"Conservative Supreme Court justices on Friday appeared skeptical that the Biden administration has legal authority to impose a broad vaccination-or-testing requirement on large employers."

"They seemed more in agreement with private businesses and Republican-led states that such policies need to be approved by Congress or implemented by state governments than a federal agency — in this case, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was among the conservative justices, who make up a majority of the court, to wonder whether Congress had given authority for agencies 'to enact such a broad regulation.' The Biden administration’s solicitor general, Elizabeth B. Prelogar, said Congress had given just such a power for the agency to enact emergency standards to protect workers in the midst of an unprecedented pandemic."

WaPo reports.

I listened to much of the oral argument, and I thought Prelogar was superhumanly great. I don't think I have ever heard someone speak so quickly for so long without sacrificing any lucidity, terseness, or enunciation. Here's her Wikipedia page. I see that she was Miss Idaho in 2004, she's fluent in Russian, and she has sons who are named Blaise and Beckett (which I'm just guessing is a tribute to Blaise Pascal and Samuel Beckett). 

"Throughout the pandemic, Democrats have been eager to style themselves as the ones that 'take the virus seriously,' which is shorthand, at least in the bluest states and cities..."

"... for endorsing the most extreme interventions. By questioning the wisdom of school closures—and taking our child out of public school—I found myself going against the party line. And when I tried to speak out on social media, I was shouted down and abused, accused of being a Trumper who didn’t care if teachers died. On Twitter, mothers who had been enlisted as unpaid essential workers were mocked, often in highly misogynistic terms. I saw multiple versions of 'they’re just mad they’re missing yoga and brunch.' Twitter is a cesspool full of unreasonable people. But the kind of moralizing and self-righteousness that I saw there came to characterize lefty COVID discourse to a harmful degree. As reported in this magazine, the parents in deep-blue Somerville, Massachusetts, who advocated for faster school reopening last spring were derided as 'fucking white parents' in a virtual public meeting. The interests of children and the health of public education were both treated as minor concerns, if these subjects were broached at all.... Beyond the infuriating nonresponse to school closures—'kids are resilient'—the discussion regarding masks has also been oblivious at times.... None of this has shaken my support for the Democratic agenda, which I still endorse wholesale. What I’ve lost is my trust that the party is truly motivated to act in the interests of those they claim to serve. How can I get excited about universal pre-K proposals, for example, when K–12 is in shambles?"

Writes Angie Schmitt in "Why I Soured on the Democrats/COVID school policies set me adrift from my tribe" (The Atlantic).

"What is your greatest regret?"/"Almost succumbing to the pills over Marlon Brando—an overweight knight errant wearing a crown, and nothing else."

 Rita Moreno answers the Proust questionnaire (at Vanity Fair).

Goodbye to Sidney Poitier.

"Sidney Poitier, trailblazing Hollywood icon who broke barriers for Black actors, dies at 94/In a groundbreaking film career, Poitier established himself as one of the finest performers in America" (NBC News).

Poitier, who rejected film roles based on offensive racial stereotypes, earned acclaim for portraying dignified, keenly intelligent men in 1960s landmarks such as “Lilies of the Field,” “A Patch of Blue,” “To Sir, With Love,” “In the Heat of the Night” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.”

He said he felt a responsibility to represent Black excellence at a time when the vast majority of movie stars were white and many Black performers were relegated to subservient or buffoonish roles. He came to be seen as an elder statesmen in the film industry, celebrated for his social conscience and admired for his regal bearing.

"8 Times Left-Wing Protesters Broke Into Government Buildings And Assaulted Democracy."

 From The Federalist.

"I will stand in this breach."

Said President Biden, in his speech yesterday. You can encounter the line in context at the end of my previous post. 

This post is to examine the idiom. What are we talking about when we say "stand in the breach"? I think of Shakespeare's "Once more unto the breach." It's about taking up a warlike frame of mind:

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man,
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger:
Stiffen the sinews, conjure up the blood...

So "the breach" is a broken open place in some fortifying wall, and the idea is to move through that space, into battle. If they don't move forward, the argument is that they will pile up dead until their bodies fill that space — close the wall up.

But that's about using the breach as an entry point into battle, not just standing there, which seems to be a poor military tactic.

From about the same time period, there is the King James Version of the Bible (1611), Psalm 106:23:

23 Therefore he said that he would destroy them, had not Moses his chosen stood before him in the breach, to turn away his wrath, lest he should destroy them.

There, "the breach" is the broken connection between God and human beings, and Moses was able to stand in that breach. To say "I will stand in this breach" — as Biden did — is to draw a parallel between yourself and Moses. Does Biden mean that the country is broken open with angry Trumpsters on one side and the rest of the people needing mediation that Biden, like Moses, can bring? It's a funny analogy, because not only is Biden a strange Moses, but because the nefarious insurrectionists are in the God position.

The Oxford English Dictionary has an entry for the phrase "to stand in the breach." One definition of "breach" is "The product of breaking... esp. 'A gap in a fortification made by a battery’ (Johnson). Hence to stand in the breach (often figurative)." The only example it gives of standing in the breach that Psalm (in the King James Version).

Searching a bit more, I see that there are some translations of the Bible that have the phrase "stand in the breach" in Ezekiel 22:30: "And I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none."

Trumpsters perk up at "a man among them who should build up the wall." 

That's as far as I'll go in this blog post. I have a problem with understanding "the breach" as a break in a wall, because I don't see the effectiveness of simply standing there. I think it ought to mean a division between groups of people and serving as a mediator.