Links for 2012-03-28

There are better places on the Intertoobz than this one to look either for a general overview of what may happen in the Court over the next three days -- Ezra Klein's joint did a masterful job this morning -- and, if you're looking for pundits to support your own personal opinions on what should happen, you don't need me to help you find them. But this picture makes the whole affair ring a little hollow already. What exactly are these people praying for? Are they praying for a return to the way things were? For the denial of health insurance due to whatever the whimsical opinions of corporate bureaucrats determine to be a pre-existing condition? For the right to be thrown into an overpriced, endlessly gouging "marketplace" the moment when you turn 25, and you're burdened anyway with usurious student loans? Are they praying that the law be upheld? That the central place the insurance industry holds the way we do health care in this country be guaranteed in what looks like perpetuity, with

But David Levy? He really ought to know about the workflow that goes into high-value teaching. He really ought to know that even with the protection of tenure and considerable autonomy, most faculty in most higher education put in long hours because they believe in their profession. So what's going on here? I think it's fairly simple. You know the classic "First they came for the X, then they came for the Y, and I did nothing, and then they came for me?" schtick? This is one of those stories. In fact, it's the end of one of those stories. They already came for the doctors and the psychiatrists. They already came for the lawyers. They already came for the accountants and auditors. They already came for all the professions. Professors are the last to be broken on the wheel, the last to be put at their station in the new assembly lines of the 21st Century Service Economy.