WASHINGTON INSIGHT

FEISTY LIBERAL, STILL: At age 89, retired Justice William J. Brennan basks in acclaim over his 34-year career on the Supreme Court. But in recent interviews, he’s made clear he is not too happy over how the justices are behaving in his absence. Conservatives have held sway by the slimmest possible 5-4 majorities on a number of decisions this term. This week, a 5-4 majority bluntly overturned Brennan’s last opinion, a 1990 ruling that upheld federal affirmative action as “benign” discrimination. Asked about his decision to step down, Brennan told NBC-TV news: “I’ve regretted it every minute since I did. . . . God, when I see some of the decisions, I think, ‘Jeez, if only I were there.’ ”

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DIG AT DAYS: The Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action cast U.S. Solicitor General Drew S. Days III, a Yale law professor and former civil rights chief in the Jimmy Carter Administration, as among those on the losing end. But adding insult to injury, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor quoted a 1987 Yale Law Review article that argued “good motives” cannot justify “an explicit racial classification system.” Its author, she noted, was Prof. Days.

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“GRAMM? GRAMM?”: Presidential hopeful Sen. Phil Gramm, who is lagging in early polls, is far ahead in at least one category: Of the four senators running for President, the Texas Republican has compiled the worst voting record in this session of Congress. Gramm has missed 25 of the 232 votes taken by the Senate this year, according to statistics compiled by the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. Only Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski has been absent for more votes, 30, and her office attributes most of those misses to a single day when the Maryland Democrat was out of town delivering a commencement address. By comparison, presidential candidates Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) has missed no votes, Bob Dole (R-Kan.) has missed two and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) has missed six. Gramm spokesman Larry Neal told Roll Call the senator only misses votes that are not close or crucial. “Anybody who is serious about running for President is going to spend some time running for President. If the others are not, then they are not.”

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MAJOR GOOF: Not that it compromised NATO security in a big way, but military officials would have preferred, on balance, that the Canadian military had faxed its secret 22-page draft of plans for involvement in a “peacekeeping and humanitarian exercise” at Ft. Polk, La., to the correct military officer in Victoria, B.C.--and not to the local newspaper. “My fingers didn’t do the walking correctly,” a humbled Canadian Maj. Walter Chipchase told the Associated Press from Ottawa after the fax turned up at Victoria’s Times Colonist newspaper. Canada is joining with troops from 12 European nations, members of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program for former Soviet bloc countries, for three weeks of exercises in August.

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WRONG TARGET: During House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s weekend trip to New Hampshire, he described with crowd-arousing passion how the liberal national media often distorts his views. Shortly afterward, a reporter for the Washington Times--a newspaper many believe provides a conservative alternative to left-leaning coverage of government--was confronted by a well-dressed man, who grabbed the phone from the reporter’s ear, crying, “I’m going to put this where it belongs!” To reporter Ralph Z. Hallow’s astonishment, the man opened the door of a nearby portable toilet and dropped the phone down the chute.