LAS VEGAS - Singer Linda Ronstadt not only got booed, she got the boot after lauding filmmaker Michael Moore and his new movie “Fahrenheit 9/11” during a performance at the Aladdin hotel-casino.

Before singing “Desperado” for an encore Saturday night, the 58-year-old rocker called Moore a “great American patriot” and “someone who is spreading the truth.” She also encouraged everybody to see the documentary about President Bush.

Ronstadt’s comments drew loud boos and some of the 4,500 people in attendance stormed out of the theater. People also tore down concert posters and tossed cocktails into the air.

“It was a very ugly scene,” Aladdin President Bill Timmins told The Associated Press. “She praised him and all of a sudden all bedlam broke loose.”

Timmins, who is British and was watching the show, decided Ronstadt had to go — for good. Timmins said he didn’t allow Ronstadt back in her luxury suite and she was escorted off the property.

UPDATE: of course, people are already yammering that Ronstadt's "First Amendment Rights" are being curtailed. Guys, I hate to be a broken MP3 file, but new rule: You have to have READ the First Amendment before you invoke it in an indignant statement of purpose.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Not a word in there about how if a performer, hired to sing, says something political and unpopular, her audience is prohibited from booing her off the stage. Congress is the only thing that the First Amendment applies to. Congress! And there's no word on whether any members of Congress were in attendance at the Aladdin, or wrote down new laws against Ronstadt before cramming them in bottles and hurling them at her head.

In other words, the First Amendment does not even apply here.

The First Amendment is a presumption that there are no laws curtailing free speech, except common-sense ones like about yelling "Movie" in a crowded firehouse. It's a prohibition against the federal government making any new such laws. Got that? It's about making new laws, not about directing how private citizens may argue with each other or decide freely whom to support with their time and their dollars.

You want balance? You want democracy? Then everybody gets their say. Not just the ones you happen to agree with. Don't miss Sparkey's vivid illustration of this pernicious little meme at work.

And incidentally, this reminds me: what if, instead of our First Amendment, we had something like Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

a) freedom of conscience and religion;
b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
d) freedom of association.

Since this language is vaguely worded in the positive, rather than crafted as a specific prohibition against the federal government—do you suppose this little event might have gone down differently? Would Timmins have had the "right" to boot Ronstadt out? After all, she has the fundamental freedom to say what she wants, right? Does this language enjoin just the government, or private citizens too? What does it actually mean?