For the past two days, we’ve been watching Patrick Leahy run the show at Sonia Sotomayor’s Senate confirmation hearing. He’s the gruff-talking Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the guy who keeps close watch on the clock to make sure senators aren’t going over their allotted time for questioning and so on. Perhaps you know him best as the man former VP Dick Cheney told to go “F--- Himself” a few years ago. But your Gaggler can’t stop thinking about another big Leahy role: His bit part in one of her favorite films of 2008, The Dark Knight.

As you’ll see in the clip above, Leahy shows up in the scene where the Joker, played by the late great Heath Ledger, storms a party at Bruce Wayne’s penthouse. Leahy is more than just your average extra. He actually trades a few lines with Ledger, who eventually won a posthumous Oscar for the role. In the film, Leahy tries to stand up to the Joker who promptly puts a switchblade to the senator’s mouth and threatens to carve a ghastly smile on his face. Leahy, we must say, looks convincingly frightened. Perhaps it’s all the Batman-related acting gigs he’s had before. Leahy, who brags that he’s the biggest Batman fan in Washington, voiced the role of a governor in Batman: The Animated Series. And he had a non-speaking role in the absolutely worst Batman movie ever: Batman & Robin. (Senator, how could you? George Clooney isn’t that cool.) But Leahy’s obsession has extended well beyond film. A few years ago, he wrote the forward for a Batman anthology and he once contributed to a Batman comic about land mines. So when you’re watching Leahy chair the Sotomayor hearings, just think: That guy almost got knifed by the Joker. No wonder he's not scared of Jeff Sessions.

Obama throws out the first pitch at a 2005 White Sox game. Photo by Anne Heisenfelt/AP

President Obama is headed to Michigan this afternoon where he’s scheduled to make remarks about the economy, job training and education. But it’s Obama’s second stop of the day that has folks over at the White House most excited. From Detroit, the president will fly to St. Louis, where he’ll throw out the ceremonial first pitch at tonight’s Major League Baseball All-Star game. Joining Obama on Air Force One: baseball great Willie Mays. Now it’s no secret that Obama likes basketball, but he’s a pretty big baseball fan, too. There was rarely a day on the campaign that Obama wasn’t spotted wearing his beloved Chicago White Sox hat, and we’re told he wears it with almost the same frequency during down time at the White House. That prompted a funny debate among White House aides last week: Should Obama wear his White Sox gear during an official appearance at what is supposed to be a team neutral event?

Since announcing her resignation as governor of Alaska in an unexpected and jarring press conference two weeks ago, pundits have been pondering Sarah Palin's next step. Today her strategy is emerging: she intends to be a serious, national conservative voice. In another surprising move, Palin has penned an op-ed in The Washington Post, a paper she'd ordinarily decry as an engine of the liberal media elite. The piece is an attack on what she calls "President Obama's cap-and-tax energy plan." We presume she is referring to the Waxman-Markey bill which recently passed in the House. (Oddly, the White House was conspiciously absent from most of that bill's negotiations, so calling it Obama's plan is a bit of a stretch.) Palin is playing to her strengths. Aside from her social conservatism, energy was the issue where she was perceived to have the most credibility during last year's election.

The op-ed contains none of her trademark folksiness. This is not Sarah the Hockey Mom. It is a serious piece that tries to position her as an authority on the subject ("Those who understand the issue ..."), invokes the preferred GOP language ("cap-and-tax" rather than "cap-and-trade"), and points to her success ("In Alaska, we are progressing on the largest private-sector energy project in history.") Admittedly she uses an exclamation point ("But the answer doesn't lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive!"), but that is the only visible sign of the jittery, idiosyncratic Palin present at her recent press conference. The Palin evident in this op-ed is an America-first conservative; a supply-sider who's worried about costs and jobs. This is perhaps the first step in her reinvention as a politician of national stature, despite not having an elected pulpit to preach from. It's the Mitt Romney model.

Unfortunately for Palin, it doesn't look like she's read the bill or talked to the numerous industry representatives who support it. After reading Palin's op-ed, you'd be forgiven for believing that the nation's coal plants will be shut tomorrow, nuclear power and natural gas will be outlawed, and that carbon allowances will be costly in the first instance. None of this is true. Under Waxman-Markey, coal will remain a critical part of America's energy equation for decades, although coal burning utilities will be encouraged to invest in cleaner technologies. There are targets for renewable sources of energy, but their implementation is a long way off. So far in fact, that many environmentalists are aggravated, but the costs of integrating renewables into the grid will be spread out over time. A vast number of carbon allowances will be handed out for free initially, with costs ramping up over time, thus smoothing the impact of cap-and-trade on consumers. Nuclear will become a more attractive option over the longer term as the price on carbon increases, but the ramp is so slow that utilities will have ample time to invest in plant construction─again, so there isn't a price shock. There's simply no evidence to suggest that natural-gas demand will decline. Energy utilities will still need baseload power to service customers 24/7 (something wind and solar generators are still working on─their production is more variable). Natural gas has a smaller carbon footprint than coal, so its appeal to utilities will likely increase. 

But does the reality of Waxman-Markey matter? Not really. Palin isn't trying to convince fence-sitters that cap-and-trade is a bad idea. And she won't persuade anyone who supports it that she's right. She's speaking to conservatives who, already suspicious of environmentalists messing with how they live, are looking for an national advocate. And, most importantly, she's signalling to the Beltway that she expects to be taken seriously. But if that is going to happen, she may want to do her homework more thoroughly.

After the wind blew over one of his TelePrompter screens and broke it during a graduation speech in May, Vice President Joe Biden jokingly wondered how he would break the news to President Obama. “What am I going to tell the president?” Biden asked the crowd. “Tell him his teleprompter is broken? What will he do then?” Well now we know. Obama was in the middle of a speech defending his economic stimulus plan at the White House yesterday afternoon when suddenly one of his TelePrompter screens came loose and crashed to the ground. The glass plate loudly shattered into several pieces, catching Obama off guard. “Oh goodness!” he said, peering over the side of his lectern. “Sorry about that guys.” He was speaking to a group of mayors and urban policy types about efforts to help cities make it through the tough economy, and they giggled a bit as the president looked at the glass at his feet. (Those savages!) Barely skipping a beat, Obama then went back to his remarks, struggling just a little bit initially as he read from the lone remaining screen and his notes.