WASHINGTON, June 9 -- A 5,000-seat fight arena has gone up on the South Lawn of the White House, steps from the front door, and on June 14 it is meant to host a UFC card staged for the eightieth birthday of the man who lives there. Two residents of Virginia, one of them a Vietnam veteran, have now asked a federal court to take the plan apart before the first bell.

The suit, brought by a watchdog group called the Public Integrity Project, calls the event deeply corrupt. Its lawyer, Brendan Ballou, put it as bluntly as a court filing allows, a private, commercial use of the nation's most sacred monuments for private gain. The complaint says the structure rising on the lawn went up without the congressional approval or environmental review ...