Obama's court pick is imminent — POTUS to seek line-item veto — Britain sorting out ‘hung parliament’ — Did Dow tank on ‘fat finger error’?  — Palin + Facebook = Yahtzee  —  DRIVING NEXT WEEK — Look for President Obama to name his Supreme Court pick Monday, and look …

U.S. Adds 290,000 Jobs in April; Rate Rises to 9.9%  —  The American economy added an unexpectedly strong 290,000 jobs in April, while the unemployment rate rose to 9.9 percent, the government said Friday.  —  Analysts had expected a gain of about 190,000 in the month.

Steele fires RNC finance director  —  Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has fired the RNC's finance director, Rob Bickhart, on whose watch a controversial payment was made to a bondage nightclub in West Hollywood and the committee began having problems raising money from big donors.

Poll: Half of ‘Birthers’ Call It ‘Suspicion’  —  Obama's Birthplace Has Been Subject of Controversy Since Election  —  Fourteen percent of Americans say without prompting that they think Barack Obama was born in another country, rising to one in five when those with no opinion are offered that as a possibility.

Coburn objects to black and Native American farmer settlements  —  Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) stopped a Senate hotline Friday for funds to compensate black and Native American farmers discriminated against by the Agriculture Department (USDA).  —  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) …

My Interview With Jo-Vanni Roman  —  Around 1am this morning I got tipped by one of the guys at Unzipped that Jo-Vanni Roman was finally ready to speak with me.  Five minutes later I had him on the phone from Fort Lauderdale, but not before I alerted Father Tony to be ready to rush over to him immediately for a video interview.

Unwashed Masses 1, Fed 0: Sanders Scores  —  The effort to audit the Fed got a big boost last night when Senator Bernie Sanders reached an agreement with Chris Dodd, the chair of the banking committee.  Under the deal, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) would undertake a full audit …

The Surge of Ideas  —  COINdinistas and Change in the U.S. Army in 2006 … Good evening to you all.  Thanks for that warm welcome.  And thanks, Arthur, for that very kind introduction.  —  Earlier today, as I was talking with my wife about tonight's speech, she reminded me of a story …

Prominent GOP pollster: Times Square bomb scare gives Republicans an “opportunity”  —  Whit Ayres is a prominent Republican pollster who has co-founded something called “Resurgent Republic,” which bills itself as a message testing outfit for GOP lawmakers — part of an effort by Republicans …

Judge Goldstone's dark past  —  Yedioth Ahronoth investigation reveals man preaching human rights, who authored scathing report against Israel's operation in Gaza, sent at least 28 black defendants to gallows as South African judge under Apartheid regime  —  Tehiya Barak  —  Latest Update:

Al Franken takes over the U.S. Senate floor to explain a newspaper cartoon to the waiting nation  —  All we can say is thank goodness Minnesota's newest Democratic U.S. senator, Al Franken, was on duty Thursday.  —  We were poring through one of America's most glorious man-caused treasures …

A Money Too Far  —  So, is Greece the next Lehman?  No. It isn't either big enough or interconnected enough to cause global financial markets to freeze up the way they did in 2008.  Whatever caused that brief 1,000-point swoon in the Dow, it wasn't justified by actual events in Europe.

Push for Florida bestiality law goes ‘back to square one’  —  Lawmakers fail to address a proposed law banning bestiality, worried about being accused of wasting time on an outrageous topic.  —  TALLAHASSEE — From every angle, a ban on bestiality, long pushed by state prosecutors …

This is Your War on Drugs  —  Andrew has already posted this, and I'm late to the game because I couldn't bring myself to watch it, but nonetheless, I feel compelled to remark.  Yes, folks, this is your war on drugs:  —  After he watched it, my more temperate better half was literally shaking with anger.

Sue Lowden now running TV ad claiming (wrongly) that chickens-for-checkups was “out of context”  —  Wow.  If it's Friday afternoon, it's time for the latest installment in chickens-for-checkups.  And this is one of the best yet.  —  Over a month after this controversy first cracked …

High-Speed Trading Glitch Costs Investors Billions  —  The glitch that sent markets tumbling Thursday was years in the making, driven by the rise of computers that transformed stock trading more in the last 20 years than in the previous 200.  —  The old system of floor traders matching buyers …

Regulator Deferred to Oil Industry on Offshore Rig Safety  —  WASHINGTON — Federal regulators warned offshore rig operators more than a decade ago that they needed to install backup systems to control the giant undersea valves known as blowout preventers, used to cut off the flow of oil from a well in an emergency.

AN INANE LOOK AT THE NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER.... Yesterday was the official “National Day of Prayer,” held annually on the first Thursday in May by congressional decree.  The “holiday,” such as it is, was a little more noticeable this year than most because of a recent federal court ruling …

Comparing This Recession to Previous Ones: Job Changes  —  Horizontal axis shows months.  Vertical axis shows the ratio of that month's nonfarm payrolls to the nonfarm payrolls at the start of recession.  Note: Because employment is a lagging indicator, the dates for these employment trends …