That said, his crusade against Barack Obama's aggressive campaign to turn out non-Iowans who attend college in Iowa--even if they'll be home for winter break on Jan. 3--strikes me as sort of silly.

It started on Nov. 30 with a column called "The Illinois Caucus." "These are the Iowa caucuses," he wrote. "Asking people who are 'not from Iowa' to participate in them changes the nature of the event." (Obama had recently released a four-page "Students for Barack Obama" brochure that said “if you are not from Iowa, you can come back for the Iowa caucus.") On Dec. 3, Yepsen told other reporters, including NBC's Aswini Anburajan, that Obama's collegiate push was "politically dumb." Now, Yepsen's latest column expands on that observation. "Obama... has built an impressive organization and can win this on the legit," he writes. "He doesn't need to give opposition spinners a way to discredit a victory." Cue a breathless "Yepsen Warns Obama Again" headline at The Page, Time's CW clearinghouse, and a buzzy items on the blogs.

Reading Yepsen's collected works on the subject, it's difficult to discern what he finds so offensive about Obama's effort. It's not illegal for out-of-state students to caucus--Yepsen himself admits "its all quite legal." (In fact, it's encouraged by the Iowa Secretary of State.) And Obama isn't the only candidate targeting out-of-state undergrads--Yepsen confesses that "other campaigns are signing up nonresident Iowa college students, too." Yepsen does say that "no presidential campaign in memory has ever made such a large, open attempt to encourage students from another state to participate in Iowa's caucuses," but I'm not sure you can fault Obama for going "large" and "open" with an effort that Yepsen agrees is both legal and nonexclusive. And unless "the Dean" is accusing Obama of voter fraud, his insinuations about corrupt Illinois politics--"they do elections a little differently in Illinois than we do in Iowa"--are completely irrelevant.

Simply put, all of Yepsen's sound and fury boils down to one weird argument: it's illegitimate (if "barely legal") for the 21,000 out-of-state Iowa students to caucus. These are the same students, mind you, who live at least nine months a year for four to six years at a time in Iowa, where they pay sales tax on every purchase and income tax on the money they earn working part-time jobs--all while their fellow undergrads in, say, Indiana register and vote in their newly adopted state without any static.

But, you know, the Iowa caucuses are for Iowans. The rest of the Hawkeye State's students should sit on the presidential sidelines from the time they're old enough to vote until long after they're old enough to drink, right? Isn't that what XBoxes are for?

As I said, silly. And sad, too. Obama's rivals--including Clinton and Dodd--have already jumped on the nativist, ageist Yepsen bandwagon, and his odd complaints (as a real, live Iowa expert!) only serve to stoke the sort of spin he says he anticipates in the wake of an Obama victory.

I just hope the rest of us don't buy it.