BREAKING NEWS out of New Jersey: Due to an illness, Rick Springfield will not be performing this Saturday at the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City. The already sold-out show has been rescheduled for October 1, leaving many fans with open plans for tomorrow night. (But maybe Night Ranger will be performing next door at Harrah’s?)

Not to bust on Rick Springfield, a talented actor and musician, whose classic “Jessie’s Girl” I have on my iPod, but what else would you want him to play at a concert?

Galley Friend and intellectual powerhouse Chris Levenick has a great story in the Wall Street Journal this morning about a church-state controversy brewing in the California desert:

In 1934, a gritty prospector named J. Riley Bembry gathered a couple of his fellow World War I veterans at Sunrise Rock. Together they erected the cross, in honor of their fallen comrades. The memorial has been privately maintained ever since, with small groups still occasionally meeting to remember the nation’s veterans.

A wrinkle developed in 1994, when the federal government declared the surrounding area a national preserve. With the cross now located on newly public land, the memorial soon caught the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union. Working with Frank Buono, a retired park ranger turned professional activist, the ACLU demanded that the National Park Service tear down the cross.

Mr. Buono insists that his seeing the monument (“two to four times a year”) violates his civil rights. A federal district court found in his favor, and the decision was subsequently upheld by the Ninth Circuit. Last-ditch attempts to deed Sunrise Rock over to the local Veterans of Foreign Wars were struck down in April. Defenders of the memorial hope to appeal, but their options are narrowing.

But that’s not even the real story. As Levenick details, the ACLU has turned a tidy profit on the case, since “the taxpayer once again ended up paying the ACLU for pressing a highly controversial church-state lawsuit.”

Great reporting on a fantastic story.

(1) Is there a movie you want to see this summer more than Layer Cake?

(2) Is there anyone with a better voice than Michael Gambon? My God, just listen to those pipes.

From the Miami Herald:

According to a Coral Gables police report, Collazo dropped his pants, took out his penis and accused his players of not having the testicular fortitude it takes to play baseball after a loss to Florida Christian on April 7.

”He then,” according to a Coral Gables police report, “pointed to his penis, testicles and asked the team if they had a set of these or were they equipped with a vagina.”

Collazo, who led Gulliver to the Class 3A state championship last season, did not comment on the allegations.

Markos Moulitsas–political strategist, liberal guru, and blog impressario–now gets behind a plan for Democrats and abortion: Democratic politicians should simply say that they’re pro-life. Because that then neutralizes the issue. What a genius!

Peter Beinart has a lot of work to do.

Also in the George Gurley New York Observer column on Bob Saget was a choice quote from his colleague Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller fame). Talking about his upcoming documentary The Aristocrats, which features about one hundred comedians in the raw, Jillette says:

This movie is a pure dream of Thomas Jefferson, in that it’s a hundred people saying anything that pops into their head, with no fear whatsoever. You know a lot of the Hollywood people–and this pissed me off so much–would say, “Oh, your movie’s fine in the blue states, but what about in the red states, where you get to the stupid people?” And I would say, “Oh, by ‘stupid people’ you mean people who can program a machine, fix cars and perform surgeries? As opposed to we who are in Hollywood, who can’t do f–king anything?”

I used to think there was no worse comic hack than Bob Saget–everything from his “star turn” on Full House to his atrocious hosting of America’s Funniest Home Videos. His material was just awful.

But it turns out it was just a job and the real Bob Saget likes to work blue. In a fascinating New York Observer column by George Gurley, we learn that Saget was notoriously dirty in college and that what his fellow comedians found amusing was his going clean for television. (Unfortunately the article from May 9 is only available in the archives for a fee.) But reading a hard copy of it, I found it simply compelling. Saget apparently goes blue in an upcoming documentary directed by Penn Jillette called The Aristocrats–what Geoffrey Gilmore describes as “one of the most shocking and, perhaps for some, offensive films you will ever see.” The former dad of the Olsen twins tells a joke, repeated in the May 9 Observer that is so shocking (coming from Saget) that I won’t even reprint it here.

But who knew Bob Saget is our generation’s own Buddy Hackett?

So mean that he makes grown senators cry! The Radioblogger has an unbelievable mp3 of Sen. George Voinovich on the floor of the Senate speaking out against Bolton–and he’s so moved that he gets all choked up!

Bonus points: Voinovich tells us that “I came back here and ran for a second term because I’m worried about my kids and my grandchildren. [whimpering sound]”

Yes, it’s true: The reason to oppose Bolton is for the children!

You know, I hear they’re the future of this great country of ours.

In an interview with Hugh Hewitt, John Podhoretz recounts this excellent story:

In 1995, George Voinovich, when he was governor of Ohio, he was at the Cleveland airport. The President of the United States was in Cleveland, so there was a no-fly zone declared for the airport. And he insisted that his pilot take off, his personal pilot take off, despite the fact that there was a no-fly zone declared. And he got on the phone with the air traffic controller and said, what are you going to do? Shoot me down? . . .

As a result of that, in 1995, the Federal Aviation Administration fined George Voinovich $20,000 dollars for interfering with the good agency and, you know, the good order of the American aviation system. And for that man to claim that any other human being does not have the temperament to serve in a senior job, when he behaved that way…