It’s Republicans 1, Sandinistas 0

--Home at last! That’s how James Jordan Denby surely felt Sunday after he made it back to Carlinville, Ill.--one day after being released from prison in Nicaragua. Shot down while flying his plane over Nicaragua on Dec. 6, he had been accused of aiding the Contra forces. Denby, 58, showing signs of weariness, was greeted at the family farmhouse by his wife, Marie, and son, James Jr., under a red, white and blue banner that read: “Welcome Home.” “I’m a little tired. I feel fine, and it’s wonderful to be home,” he said. “I had a long day, a lot of first-class traveling.” His Sandinista captors, he said, continually urged him to speak out against President Reagan’s call for more U.S. aid to the rebels, but he refused. “I told them I was a lifelong Republican, and that was the wrong thing to tell them,” he said. “That was like saying, ‘I’m guilty of everything; I’m your enemy.’ ”

--The American Legion is up in arms. When politicians figuratively wrap themselves in the American flag with patriotic pronouncements, few notice, but when Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.) draped the Stars and Stripes around her shoulders for the February cover of Ms. magazine, the legionnaires took offense. John Minnick, spokesman for the Legion’s national office in Washington, said in an interview with the Denver Post: “It’s inexcusable that a member of Congress would do this.” The pose, he said, is “an unthinking act of disrespect.” The photo shows Schroeder wearing a business suit, with the flag as a shawl, for a cover story entitled “Who’s Crying Now? The Unsinkable Pat Schroeder.” Marcia Gillespie, executive editor for the magazine, said the flag was used to suggest that Schroeder “has a future in America. . . . Look again, it was never intended to show disrespect, and we don’t believe it does.” She added: “Most of the letters (of complaint) were predictable, from Army people. There were a few nasty ones.” A federal law says the flag may not be used “as a costume,” but it is seldom enforced.

--Philippines President Corazon Aquino’s treasury is $587,180 richer these days, thanks to an auction at Christie’s in New York. That was the amount collected--for the Philippine government--through the sale of furnishings from the 5th Avenue apartment of former President Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, Imelda. The highest prices were paid for a Sevres dessert service ($77,000, according to Christie’s spokeswoman Robin Riley) and for two George II-style mahogany library armchairs ($37,400). All told, 83 lots of English and Continental furniture, silver, porcelain and artworks were sold.