Obama ‘amused’ by Tea Party rallies  —  President Barack Obama struck a hyperpartisan note Thursday, telling Democrats that he was “amused” by the Tax Day Tea Party rallies.  —  Obama, addressing a Democratic National Committee (DNC) fundraiser in Miami, did little to endear himself …

Obama orders hospitals to grant same-sex couples visitation rights  —  President Obama on Thursday signed a memorandum requiring hospitals to allow gays and lesbians to have non-family visitors and to grant their partners medical power of attorney.  —  The president ordered the Department …

White House complains about CBS News blog post saying that possible Supreme Court nominee is gay  —  The White House ripped CBS News on Thursday for publishing an online column by a blogger who made assertions about the sexual orientation of Solicitor General Elena Kagan, widely viewed as a leading candidate for the Supreme Court.

The Fire Next Time  —  On Tuesday, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, called for the abolition of municipal fire departments.  —  Firefighters, he declared, “won't solve the problems that led to recent fires.  They will make them worse.”  The existence of fire departments …

C.I.A. Document Details Destruction of Tapes  —  WASHINGTON — Porter J. Goss, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in 2005 approved of the decision by one of his top aides to destroy dozens of videotapes documenting the brutal interrogation of two detainees, according to an internal C.I.A. document released Thursday.

New House Ratings: 44 Seats Moved Toward GOP  —  We are still seven months until the midterm elections, so there is at least some possibility that the landscape could shift or that Democratic attacks on the GOP could keep Republican gains down to a minimum.  —  Substantial Republican gains …

Former Sen. Mack withdraws as Crist campaign chair  —  TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Gov. Charlie Crist's political mentor, former U.S. Sen. Connie Mack, resigned Thursday as Crist's campaign chairman in his race for the U.S. Senate.  —  Mack wrote a terse, two-paragraph letter to his one-time protege …

SEC Charges Goldman Sachs With Fraud in Structuring and Marketing of CDO Tied to Subprime Mortgages  —  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  —  2010-59  —  Washington, D.C., April 16, 2010 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Goldman, Sachs & Co. and one of its vice presidents …

U.S. SENATE RACE: Poll: Reid loses full ballot test  —  Third-party, nonpartisan candidates have little impact  —  U.S. Sen. Harry Reid must pick up far more support from crossover Republicans and independents to win re-election, according to a new poll that shows him losing to the GOP front-runner …

Dueling Columnists  —  A surprising disagreement has broken out between two Times columnists, with Paul Krugman demanding an apology from Andrew Ross Sorkin and Sorkin so far refusing to back down.  —  The argument is over what approach Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who writes …

Obama's nuclear strutting and fretting  —  There was something oddly disproportionate about the just-concluded nuclear summit to which President Obama summoned 46 world leaders, the largest such gathering on American soil since 1945.  That meeting was about the founding of the United Nations …

What Glenn Beck meant about social justice  —  executive producer, The Glenn Beck Program>  —  Like everyone else in America, Glenn Beck thinks “social justice” —  if its defined as charitable outreach to the poor—  is a good idea.  He supports it, he believes in it, he does it.

Recalling '95 Bombing, Clinton Sees Parallels  —  WASHINGTON — With the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing approaching, former President Bill Clinton on Thursday drew parallels between the antigovernment tone that preceded that devastating attack and the political tumult of today …

Lawyer: Laptops took thousands of images  —  The system that Lower Merion school officials used to track lost and stolen laptops wound up secretly capturing thousands of images, including photographs of students in their homes, Web sites they visited, and excerpts of their online chats …

DNC Pledges $50 Million for Midterms  —  ABC News' Teddy Davis reports: A Democratic Party official confirms that the DNC will contribute over $50 million in cash and services for the midterm elections (House, Senate, and gubernatorial races).  —  In making this announcement about the DNC's plans …

Fighting Foreclosures  —  From the start, the central concern about President Obama's antiforeclosure effort has been that it would postpone foreclosures but ultimately not prevent enough to ease the economic strain from mass defaults.  That concern seems increasingly justified.

‘Tea party’ protesters gather in Washington to rally against taxes, spending  —  Thousands of conservative “tea party” activists streamed into the nation's capital Thursday to protest Obama administration policies and denounce what they regard as excessive taxation and government spending.

Merrill Lynch's $50 billion feud … (Fortune) — For Stan O'Neal, late August 2007 was a period of great anxiety.  The chairman and CEO of Merrill Lynch was vacationing at his home on Martha's Vineyard and, as the world would later learn, playing a lot of golf.