Notre Dame’s commencement begins this afternoon at 2 o’clock, with live streaming video here. President Obama will receive an honorary doctorate and deliver the commencement address. I’ll be liveblogging the event, which anti-abortion activists have threatened to disrupt.

Obama beat John McCain 57% to 41% in a straw poll of Notre Dame students last October, and the Notre Dame Observer has said that initial feedback from their student readership was strongly supportive of the commencement invitation. A poll out on Thursday, by the way, finds that only 34% of American Catholics, and only 43% of regular Catholic churchgoers, think UND should rescind their invitation to Obama.

1:40 pm: Anti-Obama protesters have been out in force at Notre Dame for weeks now. Perennial GOP also-ran Alan Keyes was arrested on campus pushing a bloody doll in a Spongebob Squarepants stroller last Monday, and a plane flying a banner bearing an image of an aborted fetus has been buzzing the campus since late April.

1:50 pm: The live feed from commencement is up now, with video of graduates filing into the venue. The commencement is being held in the Joyce Center, the campus’s 11,000-seat basketball arena. The official list of prohibited items is a long one.

1:58 pm: Commencement is beginning two minutes early, with the procession of the faculty.

2:05 pm: This year’s Notre Dame valedictorian is Brennan Bollman, who is graduating with a biology major and a peace studies minor. Bollman has done medical research in Haiti, taught school in Cambodia, and volunteered at a women’s shelter in Rochester. And yes, she’s an Obama supporter.

I’m guessing that the president won’t give the only interesting speech today.

2:15 pm: Obama enters, to wild cheering.

2:20 pm: America the Beautiful sung, invocation delivered. University president introducting valedictorian.

2:27 pm: Valedictorian Brennan Bollman stepping up to the podium. Looks thrilled nervous. Getting a standing ovation. Gotta love that she’s standing behind the presidential seal. (And that she’s working from a Teleprompter.)

2:30 pm: Nope, I was wrong. She’s delivering it from memory.

2:38 pm: Bollman urged her fellow graduates to reach out to those in trouble and work “in the Catholic social tradition” for a better world. The speech began somewhat generically, but she ended up drawing on her personal experience in a powerful way. Socially engaged, clearly coming from a progressive perspective, but not overtly political. A strong speech.

2:41 pm: Obama gets his doctorate. The leaked text was legit.

2:53 pm: The prepared text of Obama’s address is up at Huffington Post.

2:56 pm: The university president’s address is a call for Catholics to engage on moral issues in the public sphere with humility, respect, and rational argument.

3:05 pm: University president’s first applause comes when he notes that attention to Obama’s speech has emphasized Notre Dame’s decision to invite Obama to the exclusion of Obama’s decision to accept. Second one comes when he emphasizes the university’s disagreement with Obama on abortion.

Dialogue, he says, starts “by acknowledging what is honorable in others.” Offers praise to Obama far more eloquent than that which appears in the text of the honorary doctorate.

3:08 pm: This crowd loves Obama.

3:11 pm: Obama heckled. Hecklers booed, then drowned out. Obama makes a gracious reference to the valedictorian’s insistence that there is value in doing things the hard way and embracing difficulty.

3:17 pm: “We cling to outworn prejudice and fear those who are unfamiliar. Too many of us view life only through the lens of immediate self-interest and crass materialism; in which the world is necessarily a zero-sum game. The strong too often dominate the weak, and too many of those with wealth and with power find all manner of justification for their own privilege in the face of poverty and injustice.”

Wow. The “cling” thing. I wasn’t expecting him to bring that up.

3:19 pm: Big cheers for this: “The gay activist and the evangelical pastor may both deplore the ravages of HIV/AIDS, but find themselves unable to bridge the cultural divide that might unite their efforts. Those who speak out against stem cell research may be rooted in admirable conviction about the sacredness of life, but so are the parents of a child with juvenile diabetes who are convinced that their son’s or daughter’s hardships can be relieved.”

3:30 pm: Fascinating to watch the speech with the text in front of me. He goes slightly off script pretty regularly, and just about every change is an improvement.

3:38 pm: Speech over.

3:42 pm: Father Ted Hesburgh’s story is one I wasn’t familiar with. It’s a powerful one.

3:55 pm: Judge John Noonan is now delivering Laetare Medal remarks in the absence of the medal’s intended recipient (Mary Ann Glendon was the designated awardee, but declined after Obama was announced as commencement speaker.)

4:00 pm: Noonan, who was appointed to the federal bench by Ronald Reagan, says “some things all of us know are wrong. Genocide is wrong. Torture is wrong.” That gets a very warm response.

4:08 pm: Noonan now saying that he respects Glendon’s decision to decline the Laetare Medal. Goes on to say, though, that “we can recognize great goodness in in our nation’s president without defending all of his multitudinous decisions.” Obama is, he says, “a man of conscience,” and “we can rejoice” in that.

4:40 pm: I have to think that the Notre Dame administration, President Obama, and the vast majority of the graduates are really pleased with how today went.