Sham

Where is a simulcast when you really need one? Tomorrow is a great day for fillies and a great day for speed, but you will have to make a choice. Stay at home and catch eight very good 3-year-old fillies run in the $100,000 Cotillion Handicap (1 1/16 miles) at Philadelphia Park. Or travel north to Belmont Park to see unbeaten Personal Ensign take on Kentucky Derby winner Winning Colors in the $100,000 Maskette Mile. There will no simulcast of the Maskette. On To Royalty is the most accomplished filly in the Cotillion.

Louisiana's "Creationism Act" at bottom was just what the Supreme Court called it last Friday: The act was a "sham," and a fairly transparent sham at that. In the spurious name of "academic freedom," the act sought to compel the teaching of a religious doctrine. This the Constitution forbids. The case was rightly decided. Even so, the issue was not so one-sided as the court's 7-2 division would suggest. Certain aspects of Justice William J. Brennan Jr.'s majority opinion are profoundly disturbing.

The leader of a $1.4 million insurance-fraud scheme that involved his wife, his relatives and his friends was sentenced to eight years in prison in U.S. District Court yesterday. Joseph Houghton, 43, of Plymouth Meeting, organized a conspiracy that staged 27 phony automobile accidents and dozens of bogus slip-and-fall accidents and baggage-loss claims to defraud 34 insurance companies, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Reuter, a prosecutor in the case. Houghton also was ordered to make $1.2 million in restitution and fined $23,000.

It's time once again for Ask Mister Language Person, the award-winning column by the world's foremost leading word expert, who was recently chosen Official Grammarian of the U.S. Olympic Ski Team (motto: "Hopefully, Nobody Will Break Their Leg"). Our first grammar question comes from reader Martha Booth, who writes: "I heard on NPR that President Clinton and Pope John Paul II met and exchanged a few words. Do you happen to know which ones they exchanged? And can you please tell me what is sometimes seen hanging off the bottom of the "c" in the word "facade"?

TWO DOWN, four to go. On Friday, Democratic Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller announced that she would not seek re-election. Earlier, Republican Councilman Jack Kelly told me that he won't run. Four months from today, those two names won't be on the ballot when you vote. We're winning. Until last week, six had signed up for the Deferred Retirement Option Plan, a/k/a Taxpayer-Provided Powerball. Although DROP requires an "irrevocable" promise to retire, like zombies they planned to come back.

It was not a typical race track crowd that showed up at Garden State Park yesterday. About 800 trainers, owners, agents and horse fanciers from all along the East Coast showed up for the first thoroughbred horse auction at the track's $10 million sales pavilion. It was not an event for $2 bettors, and the facility, completed two weeks ago, drew more raves than the merchandise - 2-year-olds, 123 of them. "First-rate, every inch of this place," said Mel W. Gross of Cherry Hill.

Clint Eastwood flinched first and settled a lawsuit yesterday with ex-live-in Sondra Locke minutes before a jury was to render a verdict in her favor. Neither side was talking how much, but her lawyer said it was a straight cash deal with no future considerations. Locke had sought $2.5 mil for Eastwood's alleged sabotaging of her directing career. A juror said damages were discussed from $15,000 to $10 mil. The lawsuit was over a movie deal he supposedly brokered for her at Warner Bros.

Bernie Mason spent World War II moving Army tanks, sometimes picking them up and setting them down with his bare hands. He's not superhuman. And the tanks weren't some ultralight secret weapon. It was combat trickery. As a 21-year-old lieutenant, Mason helped lead a handpicked unit of artists and creative thinkers who deployed and arranged highly detailed, inflatable rubber tanks - and trucks, jeeps, and artillery - to fool the Germans into thinking the Americans had more firepower than they actually did or that the equipment was somewhere other than where it really was. Officially, the unit was the 23d Headquarters Special Troops.

You might have invested in your retirement via 401(k) accounts, one of the primary vehicles by which we shoot for financial security after we stop working. We trust our employers to provide these plans at a low cost. Mark Mensack, a new cop on the 401(k) retirement beat, says we and our corporate plan sponsors might be getting ripped off. And he wants to help: Mensack's expertise is in the area of 401(k) hidden fees and ethical issues in the retirement-plan marketplace. He has 14 years of experience as a financial adviser with broker-dealers, and three as a registered investment adviser.

NO ONE THINKS assuring fair access to work for minority contractors is that important. Not the city, with its joke of an office called the Minority Business Enterprise Council. Not certain white contractors, who lie and scheme to win bids designed to go to companies owned by minorities, women and people with disabilities. Not even federal judges, such as Stewart Dalzell. This week, in sentencing contractor Daniel Pellicciotti, a white, able-bodied male skilled tradesman who bribed an MBEC official in order to get certified as a woman-owned company, Dalzell said Pellicciotti was just "a guy trying to raise his family.