Education

The Obama administration’s push to phase out subsidies for private student loan companies and replace them with more efficient direct lending from the government is causing some serious agita among big banks that fear lost business, as The New York Times reported last week.
But curiously enough, the large student loan firms’ eagerness to protect their [...]

Looks like someone over at Arizona State University has the good sense to avoid an obvious and unnecessary P.R. disaster-in-the-making.
From Politico:
Michael M. Crow, president of Arizona State University, tells POLITICO that the school is reconsidering its widely mocked plans not to give President Barack Obama an honorary degree when he speaks at commencement on May [...]

This is rather shocking, particularly for me, as a graduate of the Arizona public university system. The Huffington Post’s Dawn Teo reports that, despite being granted the honor of having the president of the United States give its commencement address, Arizona State University has decided not to award President Obama an honorary degree, as is [...]

As The New York Times reported in a front-page story today, President Obama is slowly coming around to saying he’s thinking that he’s probably going to do something about immigration reform at some point in the future, hopefully this year.
He might even talk publicly about it in May.
That’s as much political capital as the new [...]

Supporters of homeschool constitutional amendment courting Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) as he fends off conservative challengers.

The Foundation of American Scientists reports today in Secrecy News that in a letter to President Obama, the Public Interest Declassification Board — created by Congress in 2000 to advise the president on declassification of government documents — warned that public access to government information “may be in jeopardy.”
“Our Board was heartened by your early [...]

Here’s an insightful observation from Harper’s Scott Horton today about Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz’s latest defense of the academic freedom of John Yoo, who reportedly may be asked to leave his tenured professorship at the University of California at Berkeley if an internal Justice Department report finds him guilty of ethical violations, as is [...]

The nomination of Elena Kagan, President Obama’s nominee for solicitor general — the government’s top legal representative in cases before the Supreme Court — is now being debated on the Senate floor. The Senate is expected to vote on the nomination by the end of today.
Despite some tough questioning about past experience and legal positions [...]

In another fascinating segment from CNN’s immigrant attack dog Lou Dobbs, the popular prime-time anchor last night accused President Obama of pandering to Latinos by talking about education to a group whose goal is “to export drugs and illegal aliens to the United States.”
“I don’t know what’s happened to this White House,”  Dobbs said, after [...]

A few big announcements from the Obama administration on the health care front today: Confirming reports over the weekend that he was set to do so, President Obama officially named Kansas’ Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as his nominee for secretary of health and human services. You may recall that Sebelius’ predecessor as the HHS nominee, [...]