He's "stunned?" I think it's "bleepin' golden."

(EXPLAINER: If you don't catch the refernce, "bleepin' golden" is the linguistically cleaned-up way that US Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald quoted Blago's FBI-taped description of the opportunities that President Obama's old Senate seat offered an enterprising governor to, as Blago later described provide more benefits to serve the people of Illinois. Questions that Fitz raised about the nature of what benefits to WHICH people marked the path to Blago's indictment and eventual conviction.

(And if you don't follow the news closely enough to have known that without my telling you, you're qualified to have been a Blago juror. That's the irony of our legal system. Lawyers for both sides traditionally seek jurors who are registered to vote but don't follow the news. Sounds like a contradiction of sound democratic principles to me, but I'm just a journalist.) 

How desperate are Americans to receive health care?

In case you didn't hear about him, I think Richard Verone was the most under-reported story of the week.

An unemployed North Carolina man was so desperate that he robbed a bank, just so he could be eligible for obtain free medical care --in jail!

Richard James Verone, a laid-off Coca Cola employee, recently noticed a protrusion in his chest, he says. He also had developed arthritis and carpal tunnel syndrome.

Trouble is, he didn’t have any health insurance or money for private care. So he decided to go to a place where every American gets free health care: prison.

To those of us who were blessed with the same first name, a monicker that pulled some of us into unwanted fights when we were kids, Clarence Clemons gave a special reason to feel proud. He didn't just wear the name, he enriched it!

Bruce Springsteen, among many others, appreciated the Big Man so much that the saxophonist became the heart and soul of the E Street Band. Like the rest of the band's outstanding musicians, he brought a fresh mix of jazz and soul to add a richness and depth to Springsteen's image-rich lyrics and New Jersey rock. 

Springsteen would always introduce the Big Man "last, never least" as the crowd cheered before solos like the one above, a signature cool-down closer to "Jungleland."

What's the New York Post going to do without him??? (Click on the link.)

My favorite head: "Obama Beats Weiner," lampooned here by the China Daily.

As some of my sarcastic Facebook friends put it, he was an "upstanding member" whose "boners" left us wishing for a "happy ending."

Our encouraging thought for the day goes out to this season’s graduating classes: Cheer up. Those same qualities that brought scorn, shunning and outcast status in high school often bring the most success in adult life.
So says author Alexandra Robbins, writing in our sister newspaper the Los Angeles Times. As examples who were shunned by the Cool Table in the school cafeteria, she offers country star Taylor Swift, fashion icon Tim Gunn and Harry Potter creator J. K. Rowling. Take that, snobs.
"The most heartbreaking consequence of this treatment is that tens of thousands of students—imaginative, interesting, impressionable people—think that they have done or felt something wrong," writes Robbins, yet “being different is not a problem but a strength."

I was sorry to hear that “Chicago Code” is about to be axed, as Luis Arroyave reports. It’s not because the show offered such a true-to-life depiction of Chicago police and politics (It didn’t).
I enjoyed the program mainly because I am a fan of Jennifer Beals. I've been rooting for her ever since she was one of the students I met at a Goodman Theater high school workshop to which I lectured many moons ago. Even then she was a standout talent.
She’s had a great career from “Flashdance” to “The L Word.” But in my view, she deserves better scripts than “Chicago Code” provides. Compared to the real cops and pols I’ve covered for a few decades, the dialogue and situations sound like they were dreamed up by a Los Angelean. Fuh-gedda-bow-dit.

Who snitched on Osama bin Laden? A Saudi newspaper points to that intriguing possibility that the al-Qaida leader might have been set up by a rival faction led by –Guess who?-- his top deputy, Egyptian Ayman Al Zawahiri, according to the Daily Mail.
The plot allegedly began when Zawahiri’s faction persuaded bin Laden to move out of the hard-to-reach and well-protected tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistan border, the Saudi Al-Watan newspaper reported Thursday.  He moved to his more comfortable compound in Abbottabad, where U.S. Navy SEAL Team 6 "terminated" him last weekend, as the line in Apocalypse Now goes, "with extreme prejudice."

I was shocked but not very surprised by the Obama administration’s stepping on their own story about the shooting of Osama bin Laden.
I was not surprised because I know the Page Theory of Breaking News. It holds that the first casualty of any major breaking news event is the truth.
I came up with this theory when I served many decades ago as a drafted army public information specialist. (Hey, it was a safer job than helicopter door gunner.)

Stories filtered through military offices have a built-in contradiction. Aimed at a civilian culture that values information, they are produced by a military culture that values secrecy.
The result can be something of a mess, even a scandal. The death of Pat Tillman and the rescue of Jessica Lynch come immediately to mind. Both of those stories turned out to be quite the opposite of their initial reports. I was only shocked in this case that the skinback came so soon and with such awkwardness.

President Obama rebutted Donald Trump's birther goofiness right in Donald Trump's face -- at the White House Correspondents Association dinner on Saturday night.

But POTUS's jabs were gentle compared to those of Saturday Night Live's Seth Meyers, a Northwestern grad who effectively roasted Trump, the Prez and the press as ALMOST everyone laughed.

(Trump looked rather stony-faced and unamused as the crowd guffawed, although it was hard for me to tell beneath the glow of that large furry thing on top of his head.)

"Today I am very proud of myself,” said Donald Trump, leading me to wonder: How is today different from any other day?
True to form, the Donald reacted to Obama’s release of his long-form birth certificate with all the grace of a hungry badger.
"Today I am very proud of myself because I have accomplished something that nobody else has been able to accomplish."
Let Trump have his moment of glory like a schoolyard brat while grownups carry on with the serious work of government.
He should be grateful to Obama for lending an air of legitimacy to the calls for the long-form certificate, even though it is very thin air.
As I wrote in today’s column, he doesn’t appear to have followed the news much outside the business pages. But he can shoot to the top of the Republican presidential polls in this weird political season, simply by pandering to the Obamaphobes.