I’m on deadline for a book review due tomorrow night so for the moment I only have more primary-blogging to offer. More in a day or two. Meantime, my cobloggers continue to put up awesome stuff.

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Professor J. Bradford DeLong writes to the Chair of Berkeley’s academic senate to request that a special committee, comprising

members of the faculty with expertise in moral philosophy, the role of the university, international relations, human rights, and constitutional law. I ask you to instruct this committee to write of a public report to the Academic Senate no later than this Labor Day, advising the Senate of the pros and cons of actions that the Academic Senate might or might not take in the matter of Professor John Yoo . . .

Because, as the Professor puts it, “I am enough of a liberal and enough of an academic to believe that discussion of these issues will help.”

But there are problems!

One is, according to said Chair of said senate, even convening a committee to take up the question of Yoo’s alleged misfeasance would be “defamatory.” That’s curious. But the other objection makes one wonder what Berkeley is doing with all that tax and tuition money they rake in:

Besides that, there’s the practical problem of finding committee members with the expertise you outline.

Professor Drummond, excuse me, sir. My name is Jim Henley, blogging at Unqualified Offerings and The Art of the Possible, and I was just wondering - are you shitting me?!

Let me rephrase that. No, on second thought, let me retype that question in all caps with an even larger count of fissiparous interrobangs: ARE YOU SHITTING ME?!?!?!?!?!?!

Yeah, I bolded it too.

UC Berkeley, jewel in the crown of the California University system can’t fill a committee with “faculty with expertise in moral philosophy, the role of the university, international relations, human rights, and constitutional law?” I mean, ARE YOU - ahem. Point made.

See also the Editors.

My system is very simple: assume the winner does no worse than her advantage in already-decided voters in the latest RCP average. On that basis, I’ll call for Obama by 8 in NC and Clinton by 7 in Indiana. On Wednesday, Clinton will have gained no ground in the delegate count, Obama will have stopped his short, post-Wright losing streak, and Clinton and the media will still be demanding to know why "Obama can’t close the deal" rather than demanding to know why Clinton can’t make up any ground on him, and how she ever lost the lead to a Boojie neophyte in the first place if she’s all that.

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At the American Conservative’s @tac blog, Kara Hopkins explains the amazing withdrawal plans of the Democratic candidates. "Looks like we’re going to be very busy—while getting out?" she writes of Hillary Clinton’s statements about leaving and training and protecting the massive US Embassy (and theme park?) and paying attention to Iranian influence and all sorts of things that sound like they will make packing to leave a really frazzling experience for the troops. As for the other guy:

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If there’s anything we should have learned from George W. Bush, it’s that generalized combativeness is not a good thing in a President.

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Reading Scott Horton and seeing

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There’s a surface plausibility to the Jeremiah Wright conspiracy theory that Bob Murphy provisionally endorses. In fact, I heard an African-American caller to Air America this morning offer the same suggestion.

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"There’s too much zoning" seems to be one of those general principles many libertarians and liberals could agree on. At some point into a reform program, the median libertarian will want to keep removing land-use restrictions while the modal liberal will believe that "we’ve done quite enough now." But right now, in lots of places, there’s work to be done together. See Matthew Yglesias and Tyler Cowen.

From Dennis Perrin.

Stooksbury on farming. Seems related to an argument downblog about whether small-scale production or large-scale production is more "efficient." Stooksbury says, let’s stop externalizing the producer costs of large-scale farm production and find out.

In comments downblog, Comrade Kevin suggests that not hitting back at Hillary Clinton in certain ways marks Obama as "a wuss." I am inclined to the view, rather, that:

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Clark Stooksbury notes the surprising fact: Al Gore is not behind the global food shortage.

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One Cato blogger expressed happiness that "A federal court in Argentina has decriminalized the personal consumption of drugs in that country." But it made another sad:

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Daniel Koffler schools Terry McAuliffe on the contradictions in his popular vote "argument." And you have to figure a man who has worked for Reason AND Dissent knows from contradictions.

Sometimes I listen to Bill Press in the car on the way to lunch lately. He’s fun radio in a lot of ways, but his anti-anti-ethanolism reminds me of nothing so much as a late-stage climate-change denialist brandishing at every stray story or trend that might, if you squint, befog the issue. Today it was the runup in rice prices. The logic seemed to be that rice isn’t corn and rice is expensive so, like, there. More charitably, if rice is going up and the costs of other foods are going up for reasons that include the growing wealth of substantial parts of Asia and the rising cost of inputs including energy, then we should lay off ethanol subsidies and incentives to grow corn even though they also play a causal role in food-price inflation because - well, I don’t really know why. The best answer I can come up with is, because Bill Press lives in the midwest.

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Looks like PA is going to come right in at my 55-45 prediction. Okay, I said 55-44-1, with Edwards or somebody getting the votes of a handful of the disgusted and despairing. I award myself a biscuit anyhow. This has to count as the worst possible result for the Dems as a party: it’s the minimum spread to count as a decisive victory for Clinton, but not so decisive as to start a stampede away from Obama. Punksatawny Phil sees six more weeks of lapel pins and Balkan snipers - or rather, heh heh heh, their absence . . .

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Especially Kip Esquire and Brad at the Crossed Pond, who are not fond of my characterization of libertarianism as “the court jester of politics.” Here’s the part that surprises me. Kip writes
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Surely a blog dedicated to partisan coalition-building is not too cool for a primary predictions thread! Therefore I inaugurate it.

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The blogs respond to my post of yesterday. I respond to the blogs responding. That darn Mona says my participation here is “limited.” Limited! I’ll show her!

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South African port and truck workers are refusing to move weapons from a ship that docked in the country on its way to Zimbabwe, union officials said Friday.

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Hello everyone. My name is Jim Henley and the brain trust here at AOTP has honored me with an invitation to guest-blog here for a bit. My home blog is Unqualified Offerings. If I have a claim to fame, which is doubtful, it is becoming pretty much the first “warblogger” after the atrocities of September 11, 2001 to represent the anti-interventionist tenets of libertarianism in what came to be called the blogosphere. Back then I thought of myself as a man of “the Right,” though not a “conservative,” and pitched my arguments against promiscuous war, untrammelled security prerogatives and nationalism in “right-wing” terms, trying to explain how militarism, hegemony and torture contravene libertarian and conservative principles of limited government, humility and prudence.

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