"Hi Peggy. This is Barack Obama. I'm calling to apologize on two fronts."

"One was you didn't get your question answered and I apologize.... Second apology is for using the word 'sweetie.' That's a bad habit of mine. I do it sometimes with all kinds of people. I mean no disrespect and so I am duly chastened on that front."

All kinds of people? Will he be calling Ahmadinejad "sweetie"? Just what we need is another President getting too familar...

I won't spoil it on the front page.

But spoil away in the comments: Do you approve of the final 2 for this year's "American Idol"?

"Never before has a thriving species been listed under the Environmental Species Act."

The polar bear is now listed as an threatened species. UPDATE: WSJ opinion here:

The most pernicious element in the polar bear melodrama is the way the law is being run off the rails, and even a duly elected White House can't seem to throw on the brakes. If Congress wants to enact global-warming legislation, then so be it – but the costs and benefits should be argued in the open. This fly-by-night policy making is not only unscientific. It's undemocratic.

ADDED: The quote in the title is copied from the article, but it is the Endangered Species Act, not the "Environmental Species Act." Considering the decision, the mistake is understandable.

I return to the old question of laptops in the classroom. Or: Why do law professors hate freedom?

In the comments here, XWL wondered why I hadn't blogged about this Ian Ayres' Freakonomics post about laptops, then quickly added, "Oops, see you've already posted about the 'phony laptops-in-the-classroom' issue a few years ago."

Yes, I was already sick of this issue in 2006. But what the hell? If Ian Ayres is talking about it on Freakonomics, I'll have another go at it.

Ayres's piece is called "Surfing the Class," and you may have noticed that my post from 2 years ago has a little aside saying nobody says "surfing" about the internet anymore. Oh, the things that you think have gone away that keep coming back!

Anyway. Ayres:

I wanted schools to announce that laptops, by default, should be used during class only for class-related activities unless the professor says otherwise.

What kind of attitude is that? Why do you need a rule that a prof has to override? Just have no rule and let the prof impose a rule if he wants! Are you such a candyass that you can't impose the rule on your own, that you need your preference to be the default because you don't want to take responsibility for it? Ha!

Let the default be freedom. Let the students take responsibility for their own behavior, and let the prof take responsibility for withdrawing freedom if that's what he wants to do.

I’m happy to report that Saul Levmore, the dean at the University of Chicago Law School has recently announced an end to classroom surfing...

In praising Levmore, I should be clear that there is no good a priori argument against multitasking....

Let's check to see if there is any reason not to limit what other people are allowed to do. What an attitude! Talk about default rules!

Law students are adults who generally can decide for themselves what is in their best interest — but...

But... let's control them anyway.

Ayres does at least notice at this point that he's being illiberal, so he shifts into blather about "negative externalities."

The laptop screen is a billboard that is very visible to other students sitting behind the gamer. Surfing and game playing in particular can be very distracting — both visually and in the signal they send to others that you don’t care about class.

You know, when I was a law student, birds tweeting outside the window would distract me. Students leaning their heads from one side to the other distracted me. The spittle in the corner of the teacher's lips distracted me. The prospect of lunch distracted me. But the world failed to adopt rules to clear away all these distractions. I figured out solutions on my own, like sitting in the first or second row and drawing elaborate doodles to stare at so I could listen better. I suppose my doodles were imposing negative externalities, very visible billboards that they were.

Back to Ayres:

Multitasking also makes students less present as participants in class discussion. Surfing doesn’t stop students from taking notes, but it degrades the quality of their attention.

Is that supposed to be a negative externality too? Good lord. Just ask some good questions, teacher. Be interesting. Say: "And that's exactly the sort of question I intend to put on the exam. In fact, I might put that very question on the exam."

In recent years, I’ve tried to balance student liberty with my negative externality concern by allowing surfing, but only in the back row of class. In the back row, at least, it isn’t a visual distraction.

In other words, there is a complete solution to the only real negative externality you've identified, the very visible billboard problem.

Ayres nevertheless continues:

I am tempted to ask students to collect data on how much surfing is actually going on (even when it is banned). I bet some readers will be upset with the idea of such monitoring. There is a growing sense of entitlement not just to surf but to keep your professor in the dark about whether you are surfing or not.

Yeah. And these readers are right. Mind your own business, lawprof. You don't come by at night to see if they are doing their homework. Do your own job, professors, and make it so that paying attention in class matters by making it affect the exam and the grades.

If the admission application simply asked students to check a box if they were willing to forgo classroom surfing, I imagine virtually all applicants would forgo their God-given right to play solitaire.

Ayres is a lawprof at Yale. If the application simply asked students to check a box if they were willing to allow their professor stop by their house and flog them for no good reason, I imagine virtually all Yale applicants would forgo their God-given right to be free of floggings.

Edwards endorses Obama.

Hot news.

"Terry McAuliffe's tour de force moment when he turned projectile nonsense into something approaching the sublime."

Josh Marshall loves this clip:

Are you in the mood to watch an HBO movie about the 2000 Florida recount?

Or are you troubled that the movie may be unfair to Democrats?

Warren Christopher, the former secretary of state who served as the public face of the Gore team in the early days of the recount effort, said this week that he believed the film, “Recount,” was “pure fiction” in its portrayal of him as a weak strategist unprepared to stand up to the aggressive tactics of James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state who was the chief Republican adviser.

Oh, look at the bright side, Warren. Democrats are just too darned kind-hearted to be evenly matched to those bastard Republicans.

Even Mr. Baker questioned the portrayal of Mr. Christopher. “I don’t think I was as ruthless as the movie portrays me, and I know he was not as wimpish as it makes him appear,” Mr. Baker said.

*adds "masculinity" tag*

“I think a lot of the strategizing in the script that I saw was somebody’s hindsight rather than what we had to deal with in the immediate aftermath of the election,” [said William M. Daley, Gore’s campaign chairman]. He added: “The perception that Warren Christopher was some wuss who got hoodwinked by Jim Baker is absolute fantasy in the mind of somebody who is trying to make themselves out to be bigger than they were.”...

“I was stunned by the [screenplay] excerpt,” [Warren Christopher] said in an interview. “Much of what the author has written about me is pure fiction. It contained events that never occurred, words I never spoke and decisions attributed to me that I never made.”

Oh, enough already. Deal with it. You don't hear James Baker bellyaching that they portrayed him as a big meanie, do you? Don't be such a .... wuss.

Hey, I'm really psyched about this movie. Here, watch the trailer.

"A goose was tapping on windows at the library on Audubon Parkway. The goose left."

The news from Erie, Pennsylvania, where maybe not that much happens.

"The NYT Should Embrace Their Inner Heroin Dealer."

Do you hear that, New York Times?

"Top 44 moments from the path to becoming #44."

I love this "highly biased, incomplete, and unfair list of classic moments from the 2008 presidential primaries." With lots of video links. Here's the one I keep coming back to when I want to laugh a lot:



ADDED: If you don't see why this video is so funny, you probably do terribly on this awareness test:

Thanks to all the commenters who kept up the conversation about the West Virginia primary long into the early morning hours.

I set up a post so you could talk while I went out to do a meetup with readers at The Wine Bar at 50 Henry Street. (You should go there if you like drinks and food nibbles.) Thanks for writing so much. Unfortunately, Blogger makes it hard to see the comments after the 200th one. (You have to click as if you were going to comment and then find the word "newer" and click on it.) So please continue the discussion here.

Thanks especially to Palladian, who was at the meetup and then joined the conversation late and way into the early morning hours. (And who gave me some wonderful Champlevé!) Palladian had a great response to something Zachary Paul Sire said:

"I'm not concerned about one tiny blip of a state filled with uneducated poor people."

And I'm not concerned about one crime-ridden blip of an inner city filled with uneducated poor black people.

How does that sentiment sound to you? Sounds like the insipid blurt of a racist asshole? Well it's no different than the sentiments you and the Obamatrons seem to endorse.

Well guess what? The majority of America isn't concerned about one large blip of any city filled with over-educated rich people.

No doubt you are one of the important educated rich people who you seem to think should control the lives of the rubes in flyover land. Well you've got a surprise coming to you, O superior being. It's people like you, and your superior messiah, that have been and will be the eternal losers in the United States. It's the people you mock and disdain as hillbillies and racists that die for your sorry, lazy, worthless little white ass.

Believe me, when Obama is defeated, either before or after the Democratic convention, your premature schadenfreude will seem even more pathetic than it already does.

You're going to lose. And that's a good thing.

Go Hillary!

And a special thanks to my son Christopher Althouse Cohen, who kept up the pro-Hillary side of the conversation, including this:

Let me just sum it all up by saying that, come Election Day in November, I will be watching CNN-HD, popping some popcorn, and laughing as McCain obliterates Obama faster than Hillary could respond to a nuclear attack against Israel.

"A panic about the situation of the African American male raised into a truculent paranoid theology."

Leon Wieseltier reads Jeremiah Wright:

Today in 1968, blogged.

I continue blogging the past, and today's year — picked by a random number generator — is:

The opening of the Paris peace talks

Bobby Kennedy winning the Indiana primary and yelling at some Nebraska students

Linda LeClair living with her boyfriend and upsetting the Barnard College alumnae

Primary night? Again?

Start the discussion without me. I've got to do something.

ADDED: Hi. I'm back. The blogger meetup was tonight. Didn't you know?

AND: The NYT says:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton won a lopsided victory on Tuesday over Senator Barack Obama in the West Virginia primary, where racial considerations emerged as an unusually salient factor. Mrs. Clinton drew strong support from white, working-class voters, who have spurned Mr. Obama in recent contests.

White. White. White. Race. Race. Race. Oh, you Democrats. You've really made a nice place for yourselves.

The number of white Democratic voters who said race had influenced their choices on Tuesday was among the highest recorded in voter surveys in the nomination fight. Two in 10 white West Virginia voters said race was an important factor in their votes. More than 8 in 10 who said it factored in their votes backed Mrs. Clinton, according to exit polls.

Ugh. Is the NYT painting it this way, or does HC's big victory deserve this downgrade?

UPDATE: There's a great comments thread inside, but since we've gone over 200 here, making the comments hard to see, please continue the conversation on this new thread that points back here.

Pun.

Fun.

(Or did that belong on The Me Blog?)

Is it a good or a bad sign when a university sees the need to hire a "Professor of Conservative Thought"?

This is the proposal for an endowment at the University of Colorado. Amusingly enough, the idea bugs liberals and conservatives:

"Why set aside money specifically for a conservative?" asks Curtis Bell, a teaching assistant in political science. "I'd rather see a quality academic than someone paid to have a particular perspective."...

[David] Horowitz fears that setting up a token right-winger as The Conservative at Boulder will brand the person as a curiosity, like "an animal in the zoo."...

"Like Margaret Mead among the Samoans, they're planning to study conservatives. That's hilarious," says [George] Will....