Brian Murray helped me work through this... it appears that there were static configuration lines in /etc/network/interfaces causing a problem. These lines had configuration options for the wireless networking as well as configuration for ethernet interfaces not on the computer. Once removed, the wifi started working fine.
** Changed in: network-manager (Ubuntu) Status: Unconfirmed => Rejected -- network manager won't let me connect to wifi https://launchpad.net/bugs/96521 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs