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.

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 …

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.

Policy Makers Seek to Calm Markets as Slide Continues  —  PARIS — Stocks slid again Friday in Europe after sharp falls in Asia, as policy makers around the globe sought to calm nervous investors who fear that Greece's debt crisis will spread within Europe and beyond.

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 …

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.

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 …

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 …

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:

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.

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.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …