THE WALL STREET JOURNAL said he looks like Justin Timberlake. Some students call him “Professor McDreamy.” But my colleague Ben Barton let his head be shaved into a Mohawk for a student fundraising drive.

Then, when it was over, he shaved the Mohawk off and became temporarily bald. I think it gives him a kind of Stone Cold Steve Austin aura. But although he’s certainly not the only law professor with a shaved head and goatee, for a few days he was probably the only law professor in America sporting a Mohawk. That’s gotta be worth something.

AT THE YALE LAW JOURNAL POCKET PART, swingers, porn, and the Sixth Circuit.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Dude, where’s my recession?

NICK BOSTROM on why we should hope that the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence turns up nothing.

GETTING PERSONAL: “It’s not so much that Wright’s ideas were anti-American and his politics were extremist and left-wing. Obama had to have known that from a 20-year association with the man (unless he only had the association for appearances and political advancement and never really cared what Wright thought). Obama got mad, it seems, because he could see that Wright meant to hurt him and was getting fired up moving for the kill.”

UPDATE: Related thoughts here: “In Obama’s eyes, the most serious wrongdoing in Wright’s statements is their disrespect of Obama.”

RICHARD MORGAN wins the Arthur C. Clarke prize for his novel Thirteen. I thought it was pretty good.

MORE ON VITAMIN D.

MCCAIN BLOWS IT: “Republican John McCain said Wednesday that the bridge collapse in Minnesota that killed 13 people last year would not have happened if Congress had not wasted so much money on pork-barrel spending.”

I yield to none in my disdain for pork-barrel spending, but the problem with the bridge was a design defect, and I think it’s kind of hard to tie that to pork.

POLL PANIC: Obama’s bad numbers.

UPDATE: Daniel Henninger notes that suddenly all those famous Obama endorsers are nowhere to be found.

BABY-SNATCHING in Arlington County.

MORE ON CHOLESTEROL from Robert Mayer.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Will a “’proto-prototype’ for a nanoassembler” lead to atomically precise manufacturing?

TIGERHAWK: Youthful passion is really quite tedious.

PW: How the establishment media has smeared black churchgoers.

“SHE HASN’T PUMPED HER OWN GAS IN YEARS:” This could have been turned into a story like the George H.W. Bush supermarket scanner story. “Clinton hopped out of the truck without incident and joined Wilfing at the pump. She seemed very interested in the actual set up, acknowledging later that she hasn’t pumped her own gas in years.” And then there’s the coffee machine video.

THE BEST AND BRIGHTEST.

ROBERT SAMUELSON: Start drilling.

It may surprise Americans to discover that the United States is the third-largest oil producer, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. We could be producing more, but Congress has put large areas of potential supply off-limits. These include the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and parts of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. By government estimates, these areas may contain 25 billion to 30 billion barrels of oil (against about 30 billion barrels of proven U.S. reserves today) and 80 trillion cubic feet or more of natural gas (compared with about 200 tcf of proven reserves).

What keeps these areas closed are exaggerated environmental fears, strong prejudice against oil companies and sheer stupidity. Americans favor both “energy independence” and cheap fuel. They deplore imports — who wants to pay foreigners? — but oppose more production in the United States. Got it?

Read the whole thing.

MICHAEL TOTTEN: Postcards from the Balkans.

I’VE BEEN SAYING FOR YEARS THAT HOMELAND SECURITY IS A JOKE, but this isn’t funny: “Federal Air Marshals (FAMs) familiar with the situation say the mix-ups, in which marshals are mistaken for terrorism suspects who share the same names, have gone on for years — just as they have for thousands of members of the traveling public.”

WSJ: Weinstein Reversed Again, This Time in NYC’s Suit Against Gun Makers. Mayor Bloomberg is unhappy, so I’m pleased.

CONFLICT AMONG THE NETROOTS: The Messianics vs. the Menopausals.

MICHAEL MOYNIHAN OFFERS A HISTORICAL CORRECTION to Jeremiah Wright:

I’m largely uninterested in this never-ending Jeremiah Wright controversy, and I’ll leave the debunking of his nutty National Press Club rant to others in the blogosphere. But there is one minor point that deserves a correction. According to Wright, his “congregation stood in solidarity with the peasants in El Salvador and Nicaragua, while our government, through Ollie North and the Iran-Contra scandal, was supporting the Contras, who were killing the peasants and the Miskito Indians in those two countries.”

I’m not sure I would be trumpeting my “solidarity” with the foul dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, but I suppose that’s a matter of taste. It should be noted, though, that it was the Sandinista government that famously massacred truculent Miskito Indians, who then responded by fighting a prolonged guerilla war against the very government supported by liberation theologists like Wright.

Is anything Wright says true?

MORE ON THE rebounding cougar population. I’ve heard several reports of cougars in East Tennessee, but there’s no official confirmation.

JUST WATCHED HILLARY ON O’REILLY, and what struck me most was how much both of them seemed to enjoy the interview. O’Reilly had it right — they’re both “polarizing figures,” and they’re both okay with that.

UPDATE: Reader Jody Green emails:

I watched the Bill and Hill show as well and what struck me was how tough she plans to be on those evil corporations. She will lower gas prices by taking the profits away from American Oil Companies???? How are old Chavez and Mugabe doing with those evil corporate profits they took away? Prices sure seem to be lower, eh?

Yeah.

ZIMBABWE UPDATE: Mugabe beaten in presidential vote, says government source. By so much they couldn’t even fake it, I guess.