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.

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 …

Brown ‘respects’ Clegg-Tory talks  —  Gordon Brown has said he “respects” the right of the Lib Dems to talk to the Tories about forming a government.  —  But he said he was still PM and, if talks failed, would open negotiations with the Lib Dems, after the election resulted in a hung parliament.

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.

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 …

The ECB's Bad Reputation  —  Neal Irwin explains that the European Central Bank could take decisive action to avert disaster in Europe but almost certainly won't for no real reason: … Dean Baker wonders what about the ECB's reputation as a competent central bank, arguing:

Senate Votes For Wall Street; Megabanks To Remain Behemoths  —  What's Your Reaction: … A move to break up major Wall Street banks failed Thursday night by a vote of 61 to 33.  —  Three Republicans, Richard Shelby of Alabama, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and John Ensign of Nevada …

For Airport Security, Size Matters  —  Cops: New high-tech screener triggered fight over manhood insult  —  A Transportation Security Administration screener is facing an assault rap after he allegedly beat a co-worker who joked about the size of the man's genitalia after he walked through a security scanner.

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 …

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 …

On the Fat Fingered Trade and Market Freakout  —  We'll know in due course, now that an investigation is underway, why the equity markets in the US went into complete freefall for about twenty minutes, with the Dow dropping 998 points.  Per Bloomberg: … Yves here.

Bill Targets Citizenship of Terrorists' Allies  —  WASHINGTON — Proposed legislation that would allow the government to revoke American citizenship from people suspected of allying themselves with terrorists set off a legal and political debate Thursday that scrambled some of the usual partisan lines on civil-liberties issues.

Time to plan for war  —  So much for US President Barack Obama's famed powers of persuasion.  At the UN's Nuclear Non-Poliferation Treaty review conference which opened this week, the Obama administration managed to lose control over the agenda before the conference even started.

Secret holds are not the problem (but the Democrats would like to make them the problem)  —  I've never been able to get a straight answer on why, exactly, senators should be able to place anonymous holds on nominees.  I can see the arguments for holds themselves: They allow senators …

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.

Poll: Lincoln leads Halter; Boozman leads both Democrats  —  LITTLE ROCK — A new poll commissioned by the Arkansas News Bureau/Stephens Media shows U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., with a 12-point lead over Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, the chief Democratic challenger to Lincoln's re-election bid.