The WonkLine: May 16, 2011

“A majority of Americans say college is unaffordable and not worth its skyrocketing price tag, but graduates say the investment pays off,” according to new data from the Pew Research Center.

Kansas asked the Department of Education for a waiver from “the requirement that all students reach proficiency in math and reading by 2014,” as mandated by the No Child Left Behind Law. Education Secretary Duncan denied the request.

California debates taxing the wealthy to save its schools.

“With Republicans pushing to rein in Medicaid costs, an experiment in Rhode Island is drawing the attention of some conservatives who say it has led to substantial savings without reducing care for the state’s poorest patients.”

“Florida wants to be the first state in the nation to charge most of its Medicaid recipients a monthly premium as well as $100 for using the ER for routine care.”

“Beset by a constant barrage of attacks from the left and increasing unease on the right, House Republican leaders plan to relaunch their proposal to turn Medicare into a privatized voucher program.”

The New York Times reported on Friday that some of the biggest supporters of marriage equality in New York are conservative financiers and wealthy donors to the Republican Party.

A new poll from Pew Research shows that a majority of Americans (58 percent) say that homosexuality should be accepted, not discouraged.

CNN Anchor Don Lemon and Phoenix Suns president and CEO Rick Welts are two of the latest public figures to come out as gay.

On Friday, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) signed the state’s Arizona immigration copycat bill into law, calling it “a rather historic moment.”

While in Georgia this weekend, rock guitarist Carlos Santana called the state’s new immigration law “anti-American,” and said that Georgia and Arizona “should be ashamed of yourselves.”

The New York Times reports that “In some of the poorest neighborhoods across the city, immigrants hoping to land jobs through employment agencies have routinely been cheated out of money.”

The U.S. officially hits its legal borrowing limit today, though the Treasury Department has at its disposal a series of steps that can delay default until August.

“The federal government’s largest housing construction program for the poor has squandered hundreds of millions of dollars on stalled or abandoned projects and routinely failed to crack down on derelict developers or the local housing agencies that funded them,” the Washington Post reports.

Is Sen. Kyl (R-AZ) open to increasing revenue?

60 Minutes examines the “sovereign citizen” movement, a highly distilled version of Tea Partiesque anti-government ideology which believes that it is free to ignore the police, the IRS and pretty much any law they want.

Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens confirms that the killing of Osama bin Laden was legal, just in case someone was worried about that.

No, state interventions in federal immigration policy are not constitutional, for the same reason that the state of Arizona is not allowed to negotiate a mutual defense pact with the nation of Pakistan.

A paper by George Mason University professors Edward Wegman and Yasmin Said attacking the scholarship of climate scientists has been “retracted following complaints of plagiarism and inadequate peer review.”

“A new set of buoys in Alaska waters” will help scientists measure ocean acidification in the northern seas.

“President Obama will fly to Memphis today to meet families displaced by the historic Mississippi River flooding.”

Marking Palestinian expulsion from Israel at the state’s founding, thousands of Palestinians confronted Israeli troops on its borders yesterday in clashes that left dozens dead and scores wounded.

For the first time, Iraqi Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr signaled that he might not renew armed resistance if U.S. troops stay in Iraq past Dec. 31, 2011.

U.S. and European officials are urging the IAEA to formally accuse Syria of covertly building a nuclear reactor.

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