With the country supposedly quiet, the Washington Post could turn the attention of its editorial page to matters of less moment. Or so it thought. After it ran an editorial supporting the anti-bra movement among women and even suggesting that "men blatantly exploit women as consumers" by foisting off such an unnecessary item of apparel, the Post got a chiding letter from an unexpected source. Wrote Elder Statesman Dean Acheson: "What traitor or fifth columnist on your staff embittered the war between the sexes by blaming men for the bra? Even as a boy looking at pictures of Boadicea, Britain's warrior queen (circa A.D. 60), one could see that she wore a brass bra as protection against the Romans--where it may still be needed, from what I hear. If armor has now been turned from defense to seduction, it was a woman who did it --and to perpetrate fraud on men. So far as the latter are concerned, women can, if they wish, go as topless as they are now bottomless."

At first his manager claimed that he was just feverish from some bug he picked up in Australia, but now it's official: love has finally come to Tiny Tim. An impetuous swain, the unearthly falsetto couldn't wait to tell reporters about his betrothal to Vicki Budinger, 17, and thereby robbed Johnny Carson of a promised exclusive on the Tonight Show. Still, Carson got to preside over the presentation of a diamond ring to "Miss Vicki" and signed up the lovers for a network wedding on Christmas Day. As Tiny tells it, he first met Vicki last June in Philadelphia when he was autographing copies of his book, Beautiful Thoughts. "He had a Band-Aid on his hand," she recalls, "and he told me it was from removing warts." For his part, Tiny, 36, was so smitten that he "shed a tear and put it in an envelope that I always keep in my ukulele."

"I hit him in the face and he went down. He came back up right away and he hit me with this blackjack. I've got a knot the size of a goose egg on my head." That was Idaho's Senator Len B. Jordan reporting a personal encounter with the law-and-order issue in crime-plagued Washington, D.C. The 70-year-old legislator was on his way to a Senate prayer breakfast when he was accosted by a burly young thug in the elevator of his apartment building. The youth demanded Jordan's wallet and watch, but the crusty Republican was in the mood for dissent. He swung. "It's ridiculous that you have to live dangerously like this," said Jordan, a 200-pounder who played football as a youth. "I figured I must be slipping when he got up again."

It seemed an odd place to hold a trial, but what was the judge to do when the defense vigorously contended that his client's guilt or innocence could only be properly assessed at the scene of the alleged crime? So off they trooped --judge, jury, counsel, bailiff and all --to Sacramento's Pink Pussy Kat Tavern, where Go-Go Dancer Susanne Haines, charged with indecent exposure, performed eight numbers. For four of them, she wore Exhibit J, a pair of transparent red panties; in the remaining four, she wore only her gold sandals for the full topless-bottomless effect. Said Municipal Judge Earl Warren Jr., 39, son of the retired Chief Justice: "The jury got a better look than we could have given them with oral testimony or by trying to re-create some of these things in the courtroom."

The juxtaposition was a bit unusual, but the effect was nonetheless smashing. The lady's hair was done up in a geisha girl's double bun and her eyes were shadowed to achieve a slight upward slant. The dress, on the other hand, was a frilly white lace affair with a high puffed collar and velvet ribbons --quite British and faintly Victorian. Lord Snowdon took the photograph of his wife sitting in the tall grass of what appeared to be a country meadow (actually part of their Kensington Palace gardens in downtown London), and there was a certain amount of tongue-in-cheek involved. Princess Margaret would soon be off to Tokyo to open British Week, a promotion-exposition aimed at persuading the Japanese to buy -L-150 million worth of British goods next year.

At Monaco's annual Red Cross Gala last month, the remarkable Josephine Baker, 63, sang for the rich and titled of Riviera society. Most of the well-heeled guests at the charity affair knew the entertainer's depressing story of debts and eviction, an unpleasant irony that was not lost on Prince Rainier and Princess Grace. Since then the couple has contributed 10,000 francs toward a down payment on a new home for Josephine and her "fraternite universelle" --twelve adopted children of all races and nationalities. The St. Louis-born singer and her brood, after losing their chateau in the south of France, have now moved into a lovely white villa on the coast at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. "This is the proof that one should never despair," said Josephine, adding that she will now work even harder to meet the rest of the payments on the $100,000 house.

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