GOVERNMENT MOTORS UPDATE: GM Is Alive. Drivers Are Dead. Any Questions?

IF YOU LIKE YOUR DOCTOR, YOU CAN KEEP YOUR DOCTOR. PERIOD. UnitedHealthcare to cut doctors for Mass. seniors. “National insurance giant UnitedHealthcare plans to cut up to 700 Massachusetts doctors from its physician network for seniors enrolled in its private Medicare plan as a way to control costs, according to company officials. For elderly patients enrolled in the plan, the cuts mean they will have to find a new doctor or eventually switch to a new health plan that covers their current doctor.”

MICKEY KAUS: Cantor’s Mistake.

MALE PRIVILEGE, CIRCA 1944:

HOPEY CHANGEY: Dems Glum About Economy Despite Upbeat Jobs Report. “Democrats, who, let’s face it, need some cheering up these days, are taking no pleasure in the jobs report. That’s because about half the country still thinks we’re in a recession. Even though the economy continues to grow — glacially, and fitfully — huge swaths of the country are not seeing any noticeable improvement.”

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WELL, THAT MAKES SENSE: Neurotic Robots Act More Human.

NOW THAT’S JUST SAD: Professor Fired After Pic Appears On Beer Can.

RATHER A LOT, REALLY: How many errors can William Greider make in two sentences describing Lochner v. New York?

SHOCKER: TSA ‘Abusively and Arbitrarily’ Using Security Designation to Hide Information.

BRITAIN: Parents arrested for “child cruelty” because son is too fat.

OUCH: Benchslap Of The Day: The D.C. Circuit Calls Out A Top Law School Professor.

THERE ARE SOME THINGS THAT MAN WAS NOT MEANT TO KNOW: Popular Science: Stop Looking For ‘Hardwired’ Differences In Male And Female Brains.

Balderdash. It’s perfectly fine to discover differences between men and women, so long as you are careful to portray women as superior.

JOURNALISM: “Question: When does the NYT want us to care about the impact of gun control laws on a convicted felon? Answer: When it’s an occasion to portray Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker as lacking in empathy.”

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CHICAGO TRIBUNE:

University officials love to complain that they don’t get all the state and federal money they’d like. They don’t complain, though, about the huge subsidies they get from governments via the subsidized tuition their increasingly indebted student bodies fork over. Scratch a whining provost and you find an executive in one of America’s most secure, sclerotic and administratively top-heavy industries.

Some bright thinkers in that industry, such as law prof and higher ed author Glenn Harlan Reynolds at the University of Tennessee, offer innovative ideas that would complement Obama’s push for more consumer info about colleges. In essence, Reynolds contends that if Muffy or Biff gets a loan, State U. collects tuition and fees but suffers little if Muffy flunks out and Biff can’t land a job. Instead, Tom and Tess Taxpayer often bear a cost.

Reynolds thinks colleges that benefit from subsidized loan money should be liable for part of the debt if a student defaults: Schools would have incentives to accept applicants who have a reasonable chance of graduating — and to warn prospective and enrolled students, loudly, that college loan money isn’t free.

Yep.

GOOGLE INVESTS BILLIONS IN satellite Internet access. This will make government censorship — and maybe spying — a bit more difficult, which is good.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: A technique for using MRI to detect molecules released during brain injury could lead to quicker emergency diagnoses.

ADVICE TO WOMEN: Why Divorced Men Are Best To Date (And Marry.) “His resistance has already been broken down by another woman so that you don’t have to endure the push back yourself.”

HOW SHIPS SURVIVE A HURRICANE AT SEA.

HMM: Fasting may help protect against immune-related effects of aging.

TAXPROF: The IRS Scandal, Day 394.

MAYBE THE PORN STARS AND AMMO DEALERS SHOULD JOIN IN: Payday Lenders Sue Regulators Over Operation Choke Point. “The initiative has raised concerns in the banking industry. Earlier this year, the Independent Community Bankers of America drafted a letter asking the Justice Department to suspend the operation and target businesses breaking the law rather than banks supplying payment services. A congressional committee last month criticized Operation Choke Point as a veiled attempt by President Barack Obama’s administration to target lawful businesses it doesn’t like.”

Related: Lawsuit Signals Strategic Shift by ‘Choke Point’ Critics. Punch back twice as hard.

STEPHEN L. CARTER: Smeared By Gay Rights Activists.

In the early 1950s, my great-uncle, Alphaeus Hunton, went to prison. It was the height of the McCarthy era, and he was serving as trustee of a bail fund established by the Civil Rights Congress, declared by the Subversive Activities Control Board to be a Communist-front organization. The fund posted bail for a group of men convicted of advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government. Several fled, and my great-uncle — along with his fellow trustee, the eminent writer Dashiell Hammett — refused to answer questions before a federal judge about the source of the bail money.

They were held in criminal contempt and put behind bars. The federal courts refused to hear their appeal, and the Supreme Court denied a stay. Hunton was subsequently listed as a subversive by the U.S. attorney general. He held a master’s degree from Harvard, but in the fraught atmosphere of the McCarthy era was unable to find suitable employment. He ultimately left the country, and died abroad.

My late father told this story often, and its echoes have resonated throughout my life. I have spent my career fighting for genuine dialogue across our disagreements rather than the sloganeering, cant and demonization that have come to characterize our politics. My own choice of the academic life was spurred in no small part by my search for an arena in which what matters is not which side you are on but the quality of your ideas.

So you will perhaps excuse me if I have no sympathy for the efforts of gay-rights activists to smear and intimidate Douglas Laycock of the University of Virginia, perhaps our most prominent scholar of law and religion, for the sin of speaking his mind.

They’re not really trying to intimidate him. They’re really trying to intimidate anyone else who might want to pursue similar scholarly lines of inquiry.

Plus: “Laycock’s wrong is to have taken the position that there may be cases in which individual religious freedom should trump compliance with law — a view that, during Bill Clinton’s administration, was considered the liberal position in our politics.” It’s not enough to hold the right views. It’s essential to hold them at the right time.