Maybe they thought he meant, "the right to bare arms."

There was a time, long ago, in a universe far, far away, that this sort of thing would have made for some very big news.

According to Novak, the brief U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement filed on behalf of the Bush administration in D.C. v. Heller was never representative of the president's position in the case, taking—as it does—a temperate, pragmatic position on the scope of the right to bear arms. The fact that President Bush's lawyer has reservations about arming the nation with fewer controls has enraged some of the president's staunchest supporters. I don't doubt Clement was trying to reflect a compromise between all sorts of constituencies at Justice. What I cannot believe is that he came to a final decision without checking in with his bosses.

But in the interest of giving the president a bit of political cover, word is sent out from on high that the SG's amicus brief was actually the unfortunate result of Clement getting all hopped up on ecstasy and filing something he'd composed on his Blackberry from the men's room at Denny's.

Thus, Novak is advised by someone (he doesn't say whom) that "the president and his senior staff were stunned to learn, on the day it was issued, that Clement's petition called on the high court to return the case to the appeals court" (italics mine) and that "newly installed Attorney General Michael Mukasey, a neophyte at Justice, was unaware of the conflict and learned about Clement's position only after it had been locked in."

I know there are still some mouth breathers who still "support the President," but do even they believe the Solicitor General would freelance on an issue as important, hoary, and complex as the second amendment? I don't know of anyone else the Bush/Cheney mob would be trying to play to here and who would accept as truth a Novak column that, basically, defines the impssible.