Apologia: I am, as I wrote before, quite busy with restaurant nonsense. But I'd just like to direct our (diminishing) readership to this particularly cogent breakdown of Elk Grove v. Newdow, otherwise known as "that atheist with a thing about the Pledge of Allegiance".

I can't be bothered to come to any conclusion about the issue, myself. Too much muddle.

Life imitates opera, unfortunately:

OGDEN -- Opera tenor David Nyman Gustafson has been arrested in an Internet sting in which he allegedly arranged a sexual rendezvous with an officer posing on the Internet as a 13-year-old girl...

U[tah]F[estival]O[pera] will replace Gustafson, who was to perform the role of the duke in Verdi's "Rigoletto" in this summer's festival season.

Now that's identifying with your character: he'd probably have made a terrific Duke of Mantua, the bastard. If life's going to imitate opera, can it please not be Verdi?

Not dead; just extremely busy.