Back in June, the New York Times’ Caucus blog ran this item:

As Senators Barack Obama and John McCain pushed their competing energy plans at campaign events today, advisers to Mr. McCain opened up a few new lines of attack on the presumptive Democratic nominee – one of them cinematic.

Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, accused Mr. Obama of being the “Dr. No” of energy security in a conference call with reporters….

His reference to the 1962 spy film starring Sean Connery

… this may not be the last time we hear the name “Dr. No”…

Turns out, the Caucus had it right.

Monday in DC brings the beginning of Screen on the Green, the free movie series on the Mall.

And the kick-off movie?  “Dr. No.”

Confused by the Washington Post’s transition from Leonard Downie to Marcus Brauchli?

Fortunately, the big media give us some helpful tips on how to say the new executive editor’s name.

• New York Times:  “Mr. Brauchli (pronounced BROW-klee)”
• Washington Post:  “Brauchli (pronounced BROW-klee)”
• AP: “Brauchli (whose name is pronounced BROCK’-lee)”

Of course, we know where our bread is buttered (pronounced BUTT-ered), so we’ll follow Fishbowl’s direction:

It’s pronounced like “broccoli.”

Ah yes, like the James Bond producer!

Washington Wizard Gilbert Arenas, who agreed to a six-year, $111 million contract with the Wizards after the team offered him a six-year deal worth between $125 million and $127 million:

“I looked at like this: There is nothing I can do for my family with $127 million that I can’t do with $111 million.  I mean, college is expensive but it ain’t that dang expensive.”

From the Examiner’s Yeas & Nays:

122: Number of political contributors from D.C. in the 2007-08 cycle who have listed “homemaker” as their occupation on Federal Election Commission forms.

36: Number of those who contributed the maximum of $2,300 to a candidate.

In today’s Post, Bob Kaiser’s focus on focus groups and Peter Hart has this adorable nugget:

Hart reported these reactions to the Mondale campaign, which quickly produced a new television commercial featuring a red telephone with a flashing orange light. A narrator intoned:

“The most awesome, powerful responsibility in the world lies in the hand that picks up this phone. The idea of an unsure, unsteady, untested hand is something to really think about. This is the issue of our times. On March 20, vote as if the future of the world is at stake. Mondale. This president will know what he’s doing. And that’s the difference between Gary Hart and Walter Mondale.”

Mondale won in Georgia, and kept this ad on the air in all the states that later held primaries. “The Hart people never had an answer to it,” Peter Hart recalls.

(Thanks to the wonders of YouTube, that 1984 Mondale commercial can be seen by going to www.youtube.com and searching for “Mondale Video 10.”) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fu-2Ew1ijg .

Ah yes, the “wonders of YouTube,” that mystifying sorcery device we find on our Google machines.

Too intimated to search “Mondale Video 10″?  You can also magically find it by searching “Walter Mondale Phone Ad 1984.”  And even “I’m with Bob Kaiser, YouTube is amazing Mondale 1984 ad phone.”
Will wonders never cease?

Best Fishbowl interview ever — with the great Jim Mills of The Hill.  A sample of the brilliance:

Lincoln, Jefferson or Washington Memorial?

Lincoln. Although it really bothers me when Teddy Roosevelt comes in dead last every time during those races at the new ballpark. I am thinking that thing might be fixed. Just had to get that off my chest.

A footnote in Justice Scalia’s Heller decision says the case is about DC, so it does not decide whether the second amendment applies to the states.

Where did we first hear that perspective?

In the September 6, 2007 Extreme Mortman — from our own senior historian Richard Andrews.

A refresher from back then:

District of Columbia Mayor Fenty and his taxpayer-funded lawyer had an op-ed in the Washington Post Tuesday (followed by a Post editorial Wednesday) whining about D. C.’s forthcoming request to the U. S. Supreme Court to reverse the U. S. Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit decision killing their 30-year-old pet handgun ban as violative of the Second Amendment to the U. S. Constitution.

Both pieces, being of the opinion/advocacy genre, pretty much take as givens that the Court will take up their case, and issue a sweeping decision of nationwide import  - on their side.  Their opponents in the case, judging from news reports, seem to be of the same view - other than as to which side will win.

Well, maybe not.

First, the Supremes have been dodging cases about the Second Amendment for over half a century - either not reviewing them at all, or deciding them on other or narrower grounds (such as the 1997 case of Printz v. U.S., decided instead on 10th Amendment grounds, as part of the Court’s 1990s campaign to revive Federalism).  This case contains fine opportunities for either result, leaving the big question still up in the air - everywhere but the District.

The District’s petition, in trying to gain the Court’s attention, contains the usual claim that the decision in question conflicts with similar cases decided in U. S. Courts of Appeal in other Circuits, and that Supreme intervention is need to avoid having rights under Constitution differ from place to place within the nation.  The claim is rather dubious in this instance, because the District of Columbia IS a rather different sort of place, Constitution-wise.

The decisions from OTHER Circuits all involve folks seeking to have their interpretation of the Second Amendment held to apply to the states, via the 14th Amendment’s “equal protection of the laws” provision, under the Supreme Court’s “incorporation” doctrine - that some, but not all, of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights (first ten Amendments) are so fundamental that the states must follow them, too - not just the federal government, the Bill of Rights’ original target.

However, D. C. is NOT a state - and the Supreme Court has long held that the Bill of Rights applies directly to it, as merely an arm of the federal government.  For example, when in 1954 the Court outlawed racial segregation in state public schools under the 14th Amendment (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS), it decided a separate case (Bolling v. Sharpe), in a separate opinion, declaring that the Fifth Amendment in applying to D.C. directly mandated the same result.

Thus, the D. C. Circuit Appeals Court, not having to determine whether the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms was a “fundamental” right, could make a decision that would stand very easily beside other Circuit’s presumed choices that it was not sufficiently “fundamental” to deserve protection against the states’ normal exercise of the police power.  This gives the Supreme Court an excellent out to simply not hear the case: there is no “conflict,” because the grounds of the decision are not the same.

(The Court is peculiarly familiar with the use of handguns for self-defense - the late Chief Justice Burger,  answering a knock on the door of his home late one night, prudently brought along a large caliber revolver; rather surprising the unexpected reporter seeking comment on a case!)

Similarly, even if the court should decide to take up the case (only the votes of four Justices are needed to hear the matter), a majority might then still limit the decision (if it goes against the District) to the federal government its districts, Commonwealths and territories - leaving the question of application to the states ‘for another day.’

The very live potential for one of these two scenarios to occur has so far been undiscussed in any the journalistic reports/advocate diatribes.  Neither would make either side completely happy, but the later course could make for a finely honed piece of constitutional decisionmaking - something just up Chief Justice Roberts’ alley - while saving the main public controversy for the future, if only in the cause of lawyer relief.

Reaction to the Supreme Court striking down the Supreme Court ban on handguns, from Extreme Mortman senior historian Richard Andrews:

1. The anti-gun folk have lost the talking point that ‘there ain’t no such individual right’; but,

2. This decision contains more ‘lawyer relief’; determining HOW FAR an authoritarian jurisdiction can go in ‘resonable regulation’ will take YEARS to fight out in court - the District law was so extreme it virtually had a bullseye painted on it with the words ‘Ready, Aim, Fire’ - it was just a matter of getting someone to pay for lining up a laundry list of plaintiffs (only one of six made it through the procedral hurdles), lucking out with a good panel of Appeals Court judges (in DC, not a foregone conclusion - there is at least one still there from the Carter years!), and making it to the Supreme Court before there was a net increase of liberal Justices.

3. But a host of questions remain about what states and localities CAN do - limitations on numbers of weapons/amounts of ammunition, how high can registration/licensing fees be before they are too burdensome, how much ‘training’ can be required for a license; what about situations not directly related to self-defense?  A number of possible restrictions on gun commerce are expressly outside the holding in this case - onerous zoning, bans on gunshows or gunshops.  Then there’s transportation of firearms in personal vehicles, etc.

If there’s a skull floating in the Chesapeake Bay.

From Marc Fisher in today’s Washington Post:

Rather than embrace the addition of much-needed housing to the new downtown that Montgomery County taxpayers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to develop, the county planning board has taken the first step toward declaring the Falkland Chase apartments a historic property that could not be demolished. The board’s final vote on the historic designation is set for next week.

What’s historic about the 479-unit complex at 16th Street and East West Highway? Well, Eleanor Roosevelt cut the ribbon when the buildings opened in 1937. And Falkland Chase was one of the first apartment projects backed by the Federal Housing Administration.

Wow.  Impressive.  Not the Falkland Chase history — but what a buncha sheep the planning board is.