WASHINGTON INSIGHT

INVITED AGAIN: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been invited to speak after all at a graduation ceremony Monday in a Maryland suburb of Washington. The Prince George’s County school board voted, 6 to 4, this week to overrule its superintendent’s decision to withdraw an invitation for Thomas to appear at the Thomas Pullen Creative and Performing Arts School. The administrator had acted after three black board members and some black parents protested, arguing that the conservative jurist, who is the high court’s only African American, had an abysmal record on civil rights and other issues. The superintendent’s action brought complaints from parents who wanted Thomas to speak, so the board took a formal vote.

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UP CLOSE: Thomas’ new invitation will give him a chance to see a 1st Amendment battle at street level. School board member Kenneth Johnson says he plans to lead a demonstration against the appearance. “There will not be a way for him to get in that school,” Johnson said, because protesters will block the entrance. Two years ago, in a Florida case, the high court ruled that the 1st Amendment did not give antiabortion protesters a right to block access to an abortion clinic. Thomas dissented.

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LITERARY LICENSE: Ever since the Unabomber’s manifesto underscored his concern over the trashing of nature, some folks have been trying to blame the bombings on dangerous thinking by environmental advocates. Now the conservative magazine American Spectator and one of its heavy readers, Rush Limbaugh, suggest that the Justice Department and the FBI are hiding something discovered in Unabomber suspect Theodore J. Kaczynski’s cabin: a copy of Vice President Al Gore’s book “Earth in the Balance.” The Justice Department insists that Gore’s book is not among about 200 found by investigators. “We’re at the mercy of any mischief maker,” grumbled Justice Department spokesman Carl Stern. “There is no way to prove what isn’t there.”

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BEING CAREFUL: In a move that suggests House Speaker Newt Gingrich fears his House Republican colleagues may be in a bit of trouble in the elections, the Georgia lawmaker has sent a memo instructing the House Appropriations Committee to consider the political impact of spending bills on incumbents--especially those in California. Some Democrats see the act as blatantly political. But Gingrich said his purpose is to win approval of funding bills “so that we can avoid having the government close down . . . to save the American taxpayer from wasteful Washington spending and to reflect the concerns and the needs of individual members of the Congress.” He said California deserves special attention because its delegation is largest. The memo was news to Gingrich’s No. 2, House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas. Armey said he knew nothing of the memo and didn’t think GOP candidates needed special attention. “I believe in discipline in appropriations,” Armey said. “We have no reason to be concerned about these elections.”

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HOMESPUN HUMOR: Armey, who sprinkles his weekly press conferences with quotes from country and western crooners and stabs at humor, stumbled repeatedly last week when pronouncing the surname of Israeli Prime Minister-elect Benjamin Netanyahu (net-in-YAH-hu). Corrected finally by a reporter, Armey burbled: “I kept thinking he was a rodeo star.” Armey also remarked about the guilty verdicts the day before in the Whitewater-related trial of three Arkansans: “Say what you want about the president, but we know his friends have convictions.”