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Hey, Don Hill, who just joined your legal defense team? You don't say.

Earlier this afternoon, Ken Carter at Focus Communications sent along an invite to a Sunday-night prayer vigil in front of the Earle Cabell Federal Building and Courthouse -- where, so happens, one week from today former Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill and his missus, Sheila Farrington, finally go to trial in the City Hall corruption case in which four folks have already pleaded guilty. Hill's got quite the all-star lineup ready to take their case to a higher power, among them: Frederick D. Haynes, the senior pastor at Friendship-West Baptist Church and a good friend of Mayor Tom Leppert's; Bryan Carter, senior Pastor at Concord Church, which is where Hill attends services; and S.M. Wright, senior pastor at Peoples Baptist Church.

The vigil's scheduled to last from 6 to 8 p.m., and the press release bears this note of instruction for those considering attending: "Women attending are encouraged to wear white and bring candles."

Side note: Believe it or not, Don Hill's 2007 mayoral campaign Web site is still very much alive.

Still not sure who gets the copy of Holy Roller (though the Monty Python fan's a real player), but today is the official publication date of former Dallas Observer editor Julie Lyons's tome that bears the subtitle "Finding Redemption and the Holy Ghost in a Forgotten Texas Church." That church is The Body of Christ Assembly in South Dallas, where Julie says that in April of 1990 she found crack addicts being healed through prayer -- "a news tip from God," as she describes it, since, back then, she was a crime reporter for the Dallas Times Herald looking for both a fresh angle on a worn-out news story and an honest-to-God miracle. Turned out to be quite the two-fer.

Friends of Unfair Park, of course, will take particular interest in Chapter 15 -- the one titled "Bible Girl," in which Julie writes about the genesis of her Unfair Park column. She writes of readers' reactions to the one dealing with her "struggle with same-sex attraction"; she says she "got a kick out of my critics' seemingly desperate need to discredit what God had done for me" as they wrote comments that took "digs at my church and family, and crude speculation regarding which sex toys I might've preferred in my supposed previous life as a lesbian."

Today, Rod Dreher has posted to his BeliefNet blog, Crunchy Con, an interview with our former leader in which they get religion. He also finds out what she's been up to since Bible Girl left Unfair Park to the heathens.

On Monday, we noted that the Royal Lane-based Institute for Creation Research filed a mammoth lawsuit in Dallas federal court in which it alleges that the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board violated its constitutional rights when denying its application to offer master's degrees in science last year. Today, the ICR steps up its fight against the THECB with an essay titled "Censorship in Texas: Fighting Academic and Religious Discrimination," in which it reiterates the claims made in the lawsuit while portraying the privately funded institution as "a victim of academic (and religious) viewpoint discrimination in the Lone Star State." An excerpt:

As a result, college-level science education in Texas is now muzzled by Texas governmental censorship, a situation that interferes with both academic freedom, the right of a school to teach any subject from its own institutional viewpoint; and interstate commerce, the right of a school outside Texas to recruit and teach Texas residents. ...

Of course, the controversy is not unique to ICR's graduate school. Scientists and professors who are Christians, and even non-Christian academics, continue to face persecution from science censors. Ben Stein's Expelled documentary in 2008 clearly demonstrated that even highly-qualified scientists in secular institutions are facing various forms of expulsion simply because they question "recognized" Darwinian beliefs and the tenets of evolutionary science.

For those with a little free time this morning, the Institute for Creation Research filed an 80-page complaint in Dallas federal court at the end of last week claiming that the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has done violated its constitutional rights, including freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religious exercise. For starters. Why come?

Says the suit, when the THECB -- of which Raymund Paredes, Ph.D. serves as commish -- decided last year not to let the Royal Lane-based joint hand out master's degrees in science, they "perpetrated viewpoint discrimination and censorship." The lawsuit reads kind of like stereo instructions, but here's one excerpt among many worth a look:

THECB's Commissioner Paredes' unquestioned faith in a "Big Bang" of "14 billion years ago" (which he may believe in by faith, but he has no eye-witness knowledge of such) should not be confused with the "great noise" mentioned in 2nd Peter 3:10. The evolution-only viewpoint discrimination is further illustrated in Commisioner Paredes' opinion (of 4-23-2008) that evolutionary thinking as "foundational" to "modern science."

Now, Texas Rangers second baseman Ian Kinsler doesn't necessarily identify himself as Jewish -- his dad is, his mom ain't, and the guy was never bar mitzvahed. Though, as he told ESPN.com last August, he knows he's beloved in the Jewish community: "If you have any kind of Jewish ancestry attached to your name, people are going to notice it. Whenever we're in New York, Boston or Chicago, I always get some kind of question about it."

Which is why last night, shortly after the Rangers pounded the Orioles 19-6 in Arlington and Kinsler went 6-for-6 while hitting for the cycle, Friend of Unfair Park and fellow MOT "The Big Guy" sent along this note: The last Jewish player to hit for the cycle was Harry "The Horse" Danning in 1940 -- "until Ian Kinsler tonight." And, yeah, looking at the full list and talking to some Rangers front-office folks this morning, that sounds about right -- though I seem to recall Oddibe McDowell could do a mean Torah portion.

Had totally intended to attend this weekend's Christian Book Expo at the Dallas Convention Center, if only for the cameo appearance by the godless Christopher Hitchens. Alas, my weekend got away from me, and, sadly, no expo for me. Or for most folks, as it turns out: Publishers Weekly today reports that only 1,500 consumer attendees showed up, which was way below organizers' prayed-for 20,000. And it wasn't for lack of advance (good) word: The show's been in the works for two years. Notes PW:

Stacks of unsold books and glum publishers stood for three days inside the cavernous Dallas Convention Center this past weekend at the Christian Book Expo, a first-of-its-kind event designed to connect publishers and authors directly with readers in the evangelical Christian market. Only problem was there were few readers to connect with, despite the show's location in Dallas, the buckle of the Bible Belt and a top market for Christian publishers. ... Off the record, exhibitor publishers rolled their eyes heavenward, but spoke with circumspection on the record. "Every new experience has a few nicks and bruises, but things can be worked out," said Greg Petree, v-p of marketing at Howard Books. A few were more blunt. "We can't afford these kinds of risks," said Dennis R. Hillman, publisher at Kregel Publications. "In a year like this the last thing we want to do is something that has no payoff."

I, of course, blame the lack of a proper convention center hotel. After the jump, Hitchens's introductory remarks.

That billboard pictured at right is currently hovering somewhere over a Philadelphia neighborhood; cities in Arizona and Colorado already have one too. Dallas is next, courtesy the fund-raising efforts of the Metroplex Atheists. Terry McDonald, chairman of the group, tells Unfair Park there are about 200 members of the Metroplex Atheists, a 20-year-old nonprofit whose point is "to let people know they're not alone." Says McDonald, "The idea is to present more of a united front for non-believer ideas."

They'll get the message in coming days: The Metroplex Atheists say they already have enough money to get themselves a billboard and are settling the final details; they're currently looking at a spot on Stemmons Freeway. One thing's for sure, says McDonald, "It'll be someplace very prominent." Maybe next to one of these billboards?

Intended to post this early, but got otherwise distracted -- was too busy answering the age-old question, WWJD? Alas, the delightful Adam McGill has reminded me of something I thought I only hallucinated last night during a midnight-thirty Comedy Central tune-in: Pastor Ed Young, Fellowship Church's "sexpert" (ewwww), appeared on The Colbert Report last night, and it was a religious sexperience for all involved. Sexcellent!

As mentioned last week, Dallas's T.D. Jakes did indeed deliver the pre-inaugural sermon from the St. John's Episcopal Church pulpit. The pool report contains the entirety of his sermon, delivered in front of 200 invited guests. Jakes, captured here by Patrick Michels at the Dallas premiere of Seven Pounds, quoted from Daniel 3:19 and delivered "four lessons" for President Barack Obama and his administration. Then he spoke directly to the president:

"The problems are mighty and the solutions are not simple, and everywhere you turn there will be a critic waiting to attack every decision that you make. But you are all fired up, Sir, and you are ready to go. And this nation goes with you. God goes with you. I say to you as my son who is here today, my 14-year-old son - he probably would not quote scripture. He probably would use Star Trek instead, and so I say, 'May the force be with you."

My 5-year-old son wishes to issue the correction himself: "That doesn't go with Star Trek. It goes with Star Wars. But that's fine. It's also really, really weird."

Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, the first full-time executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King's chief of staff, is in Dallas tonight to speak at the Belo Mansion as part of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture's Fourth Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Symposium. Arrested in Birmingham, Alabama, during a Freedom Riders protest in May 1961, Walker was among the organizers of the March on Washington in '63 and a key figure behind the Birmingham Campaign that same year. Walker will be joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Diane McWhorter.

Promises the Institute of tonight's event, "Both speakers will reflect on the significance of Birmingham 1963 in relation to the progress of civil rights in the U.S. from then until the present moment of President-elect Obama's historic inauguration." Walker got a jump on his fellow panelist this afternoon, however, telling Forbes that he's none too happy with Barack Obama's decision to go with Rick Warren for tomorrow's invocation. Says Walker from Dallas today, "I thought he should have had someone from the civil rights movement. It's because of the civil rights movement that he's there today."