How much, exactly, has Wall Street cost Main Street? According to Bloomberg, possibly a total of $185 billion in wages and profits—or $600 for every single American. Bankers’ lifestyles may have been undeserved and ostentatious, but they also employed a lot of people. Barbers who charged $125 for haircuts are finding themselves without clients; Wall Street restaurants have empty tables. 255,441 finance jobs have disappeared since January 2008. For each of those losses, another 3.3 jobs in other industries will vanish.

President Obama gave another rousing commencement speech on Friday—his third in three weeks—and praised over 1,000 graduates of the United States Naval Academy. Addressing the crowd in Annapolis, the President said, “I will only send you into harm's way when it is absolutely necessary, and with the strategy, the well-defined goals, the equipment and the support you need.” He continued with high praise: “In an era when too few citizens answer the call to service—to community or country—these Americans chose to serve.” One familiar name on the program was John S. McCain IV, a fourth generation Academy graduate and son of the defeated Presidential candidate. John McCain sat in his front-row seat wearing a NAVY baseball cap and watched Obama present diplomas and hug the graduating midshipman. 

Might Wall Street’s latest round of bonuses have been its last? “I don’t think we can go back to the way it was,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Bloomberg TV today. “We’re going to need to see very, very substantial change.” Geithner said that Wall Street’s pay practices, including end-of-the-year bonuses, “encouraged excessive risk-taking and helped precipitate the financial crisis,” according to Bloomberg. Geithner has ruled out setting caps on compensation, and said that he will reveal a new plan to realign pay with performance in June.

President Obama's interview schedule suggests he's on track for announcing his pick to the Supreme Court by June 3, when he leaves for an overseas trip. Sources say Obama's interviewed more than two of the candidates for the job, including Diane P. Wood of the U.S. Court of Appeals for Chicago. His announcement could come next week, though sources say he will not be conducting interviews over his Memorial Day weekend retreat to Camp David. Judge Sonia Sotomayor is considered one of the front-runners of the list of judges (whittled down to 12 on May 1), though it's unclear if Obama has interviewed her. She would the court's first Hispanic judge.

While Dick Cheney is positioning himself as the GOP's unofficial spokesman, conservatives have an eye on his daughter, Liz, who they say is more likeable. Liz combines her father's focus with her mother's softer touch: "It's a two-fer. She comes off a bit better than he does sometimes," a conservative consultant said. Liz has been appearing on TV more and more, following her father's speech criticizing Obama's policies with a CNN appearance this week, and is becoming so popular in some circles she's been encouraged to run for office. One supporter suggests she build up a following in a conservative think tank to prepare her to take on a major role in a Republican administration. Others say she is too busy raising five children and helping to write her dad's book to get into politics: "She's a chip off the block!" a friend said.

What a homecoming this must be: Roxana Saberi, the 32-year-old journalist recently freed from her 100-day jail sentence in Iran, arrived in Washington D.C. on Friday after recuperating in Vienna. Saberi was held in prison for four months on allegations of spying after she was sentenced in a 15-minute closed-door trial. The Iranian-American journalist told reporters she sang the national anthem while in jail: “It may sound corny, but I’m so happy to be home in the land of the free.” She also thanked President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, congressmen from her home state of North Dakota, human rights groups, and the Japanese government for their assistance in getting the charges dropped.

Round up the kids for these Memorial Day plans. Mary Kay Letourneau, the one-time teacher who spent seven and a half years in prison for raping her sixth grade student, Vili Fualaau, is hosting a “Hot for Teacher” theme night at the Seattle establishment Fuel Sports Eats & Beats this weekend. Fualaau, her husband since 2005 and father of two of her children, will DJ during the night and Letourneau will act as emcee. The owner of the bar doesn’t appear worried about controversy: “It's turned into sort of a love story. I realize it had a sick twist at the beginning, but they're both adults now. They're both married by the state of Washington.”

President Obama may be bulletproof, but his partners in Congress are hanging on for their lives: Republicans are keeping the heat on Nancy Pelosi, with Republican Darrell Issa of California asking the FBI to investigate her claims that the CIA lied to her. Pelosi, meanwhile, refused to answer more questions about her charges, standing by her earlier statements. And in order to help Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, whose numbers are plummeting, President Obama has scheduled a fundraising trip to Las Vegas for next week in “a panic move designed to save Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) from the same fate suffered by former leader Tom Daschle.” Reid has already raised $5 million this quarter.

It looks like Kiefer Sutherland has been saved in a last minute intervention worthy of 24. Jack McCollough will not press charges against Sutherland after the actor famously head-butted the fashion designer at a gala while defending Brooke Shields’ honor. Without a complaining witness it's unlikely Sutherland will be prosecuted. Sutherland could have landed back in jail for breaking parole for his DUI conviction last year if he had been prosecuted. It's unclear if Sutherland is paying for McCollough's medical bills as part of the deal.

In a blistering review printed in The New Republic, former TNR editor Michael Kinsley tears Newsweek—and its latest reinvention—a new one. Though Kinsley says Newsweek editor Jon Meacham is "a very smart and thoughtful guy," he completely misunderstands his medium. Now that the internet has rendered Newsweek's weekly current event summaries obsolete, Kinsley argues that glossies like Newsweek and Time "should stop worrying about that and hope to find appeal in trends, service pieces, fine writing, muckraking exposes, provocative argument, and other traditional non-news magazine fare." Instead, Kinsley says, the new Newsweek clings to out-of-date departments and stiff, impractical hierachies. Among the offenders: Letters to the editor, which forces the magazine to revel in two-week-old content despite internet comment board's ability to provide feedback faster and better; frivolous use of infographics; and Meacham's own profile of Obama, which falls prey to the "stale formula" of anecdote-centered newsmag profiles.

Gay marriage has moved forward in several states since California approved Proposition 8 in November. Now, the issue will return to the Golden State: The California Supreme Court announced today that it will rule on the constitutionality of Proposition 8 on Tuesday. The decision, which will be posted online at 10 am, will also determine whether the 18,000 gay marriages that happened in California before the ban will continue to be recognized by the state. Lawyers advocating for gay marriage argue that the ballot measure was an illegal constitutional revision and not a limited amendment.

A familiar story: conservative radio "shock jock" Eric Muller said he would undergo waterboarding on air in order to prove to his listeners the interrogation technique is not torture. A paramedic was on hand, but Muller only lasted about six seconds before he threw the toy cow he was holding as an emergency signal to stop. "It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that's no joke,"Mancow said. "It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back...It was instantaneous...and I don't want to say this: absolutely torture."

A cancer-stricken Washington woman became the first person to die under a new state-assisted suicide law Thursday night. Linda Fleming, 66, took fatal drugs prescribed by her doctor after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. The "Death with Dignity" law was approved by 60 percent of the state's voters in a referendum last year. "The pain became unbearable, and it was only going to get worse. I am a very spiritual person, and it was very important to me to be conscious, clear-minded and alert at the time of my death," Fleming said in a statement before her death. Oregon has a similar law, where 400 people chose to die over the last 12 years.

At two of L.A.'s most exclusive private schools, four-year-olds wear Tory Burch shoes and Ashton Kutcher is the assistant football coach—but good luck getting in. Even celebrities have trouble pushing their children into Harvard-Westlake and the Center for Early Education, which have acceptance rates lower than Harvard's. Deedie Hudnut, the head of the Center for Early Education (acceptance rate: 6 percent), said Gwyneth Paltrow's kid is definitely not a shoo-in, and she won't deal with stars' personal assistants. “It’s one of my pet peeves,” she says. “If you’re a good parent, you should be the one finding out about the school.” At Harvard-Westlake, one of the best prep schools in the nation with alumni like Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal and Candice Bergen, if you don't have the grades you're not getting in. “We’re not going to take anyone who can’t do the work. You’d be sunk,” Tom Hudnut says.

The Playboy empire can't find a buyer at the inflated price of $300 million, the New York Post reports. Hugh Hefner, who founded the magazine in 1953, has been unsuccessfully approaching potential buyers like Apollo Capital Partners and Providence Equity Partners in an attempt to quietly sell the ailing company. Playboy's market value is about $100 million, but sources say 83-year-old Hefner wants three times that amount to support his lavish lifestyle for the rest of his years. The company lost $13.7 million in the most recent quarter, and Hefner's daughter stepped down as CEO in January.

Clay Aiken— American Idol’s most famous runner-up—has painted a target on the show’s latest runner-up. On the members-only board on his website, Aiken said that listening to Idol’s surprise loser, Adam Lambert, made him think “my ears would bleed. Contrived, awful, and slightly frightening!” He went on to critique the show: “However, this year, there was an obvious bias. Not even having watched the show, I can tell you that I was WELL aware of the bias from the judges as to who should win. In my opinion, that is awfully unattractive.” And he complained that, “somewhere along the way, AI stopped being about real people.”

Just like the rest of the Obama administration, the White House gallery—featuring stately portraits and quiet pastorals—is getting a shakeup. The Obamas are borrowing works from a diverse set of American painters in an effort to "round out the permanent collection" and "give new voices" to lesser-known artists, according to The Wall Street Journal. They're acquiring works from the storage collections of several museums, including the National Gallery of Art. They've installed modern works by Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Nevelson, and a range of African American and Hispanic artists. As he mulls over big decisions, Obama may find solace in his new painting by Ed Ruscha, which features the words "I think maybe I'll..."

Obama's legacy is already be making the difference. Philadelphia, Miss.—a town infamous for its KKK killings in 1964—has elected its first black mayor: James A. Young, a Pentecostal minister. The town has grappled with its history since three civil rights workers were murdered by Klansmen in 1964. And while the community of 7,300 is still mainly white, Young says that his victory was due in large part to Obama, whose campaign registered several black voters there.

Controversy-loving filmmaker Michael Moore will turn his camera to the global economic meltdown in a film due out this October. Moore is staying secretive about the project, but a statement he released suggests the film will target the men and women behind the economic crisis with the same fiery outrage as his former projects attacked President Bush or the health care industry. "The wealthy, at some point, decided they didn't have enough wealth," he said in the statement." They wanted more—a lot more. So they systematically set about to fleece the American people out of their hard-earned money. Now, why would they do this? That is what I seek to discover in this movie."

We hope you didn’t already preorder Rod Blagojevich’s upcoming book: “The same state Senate that drove ex-Gov. Blagojevich from office moved Thursday to block him from cashing in on his notoriety, but doubts began to grow over the plan's legality.” The Senate voted unanimously, 59-0, to pass the Elected Officials Misconduct Forfeiture Act, which will prevent him from making money on book or television deals. If the governor signs it, it “would authorize the attorney general to launch a lawsuit against Blagojevich, after a criminal conviction, to claim ‘all proceeds traceable to the elected official's offense’ on behalf of the state. Those funds could then be deposited into the state's general checking account or a county's corporate fund,” according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Blago’s publicist said, “This is patently unconstitutional.”

Anyone searching for videos of teen celebrities like the Jonas Brothers and Hannah Montana on YouTube may have gotten a surprise Thursday, as the Web site was bombarded with hundreds of uploaded porn videos. The BBC reports that many of the videos began with footage appropriate for children before the "graphic sex acts" began. The videos appear to be part of a coordinated attack from an online community called 4Chan. The group describes itself as being the "home of the sickest, strangest, and most horrifying stuff on the Internet." One of the group's members, contacted by a BBC reporter, said the attack was meant to prove that not even a major Web site owned by Google could completely control its content.

President Obama will nominate key Democratic fundraiser and investment banker Louis Susman to be the country's ambassador to the Court of St. James. Susman bundled $300,000 in donations towards Obama's inauguration, and was a major fundraiser for Senator John Kerry's campaign as well. Susman, 71, retired in February from his post as vice chairman of Citigroup. Ambassadorships are frequently meted out as rewards to a successful campaign's high-rollers. Obama said in January that he would probably appoint some top donors as ambassadors: "It would be disingenuous for me to suggest that there are not going to be some excellent public servants but who haven't come through the ranks of the civil service," he said.

The key to a long lucid life may be as simple as a daily bridge game, The New York Times reports. The world's largest study of health and mental acuity in the elderly, begun in 1982, has finally started to figure out what makes a sharp 90-year-old sharp. A University of Southern California study of nonagenarian retirees at a community south of Los Angeles suggests that people who spend three hours or more each day "engrossed in some mental activities like cards, may be at reduced risk of developing dementia," the Times writes. As of yet, it's hard to discern whether the mentally acute stay sharp because they're active, or whether activity can actually cause mental acuity. There's also evidence that people with regular contact with others do better in and outside the home, both mentally and physically.

It's one thing to let 53 hardened criminals out on the streets in the middle of a drug war, but could you at least pretend to care about it? Guards at a prison in Zacatecas, Mexico were caught on video uselessly standing by while 53 prisoners—11 of whom are thought to be important players in the drug war—escaped from prison en masse. Grainy footage shows men appearing to be federal agents rush up to the front of the prison, and, in a span of two minutes, rounding up the inmates, escorting them into cars idling outside, and speeding away. Interpol has released an international alert, saying that the freed criminals are "a risk to the safety and security of citizens around the world."

He's not doing much to counter stereotypes about lawyers. Paul Bergrin, a former prosecutor and assistant U.S. attorney who has defended the likes of Lil' Kim, Queen Latifah, and a soldier from Abu Ghraib, has been charged with 14 crimes, including conspiracy to commit murder and racketeering, the Telegraph reports. Allegedly Paul Bergrin gave the name of a federal informant to associates of a drug dealer he was defending, who then shot the witness in Newark in 2004, according to court papers. In a 2008 drug case, Bergrin allegedly told an informant to kill a man. In a taped call he allegedly said, "I got it all figured out. Put on a ski mask and make it look like a robbery and take all the money out of the house. Earlier this month Begrin admitted that he'd conspired to pormote a Manhattan prostitution ring run by a client.

While "states rights" is historically the rallying cry for the GOP, President Obama is expanding state power in contrast with his predecessor. He’s reversed “preemption,” a Bush-era policy that allowed for the federal government to overrule state laws on everything from health to the environment. The administration is also going to reexamine state laws currently being preempted by the government, and evaluate whether or not amend policies. The Bush administration used preemption primarily to protect corporations from restrictive state laws, and some predict Obama’s changes could upset businesses that depend on the shield of preemption. Obama said that he would move forward “only with full consideration of the legitimate prerogatives of the states and with a sufficient legal basis for preemption.”

Pakistani officials are passing around the pan to help with the fallout from their anti-Taliban offensive. The U.N. has asked for $543 million in aid for the 1.6 million people displaced by the Taliban who are in suffering in camps outside of the Swat Valley. Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani recently chaired a donation conference and has so far raised $224 million from the international community. “There is an urgent need for a joint and comprehensive response to this issue by all those who are committed to fighting terrorism,” Giliani said. “We need to do something concrete and visible.”

After prolonged suspense, it appears the U.S. is steering General Motors into bankruptcy next week in a plan that will shrink the company while also pumping billions of dollars of public financing into it. The U.S. will inject somewhere around $30 billion more into GM in return for 50 percent of the restructured company and the right to name members to the board of directors. The U.S. plans to lift Chrysler out of bankruptcy in the coming weeks, hoping that both companies will transform themselves into leaner competitors in the global marketplace. Bankruptcy was a last resort—the administration negotiated for months with the union, creditors and dealers in the hopes of reducing costs without going to bankruptcy court.

Three hardened criminals and a lunatic were allegedly behind a plot to plant explosives at two Bronx synagogues, according to The New York Daily News. James Cromitie, David Williams, and Onta Williams, who were arrested this week after officials accused them of purchasing phony weapons and explosives from an FBI informant, had served time in prison for selling drugs. The fourth suspect, Laguerre Payen, had previously served time for assault and suffered from severe mental problems. Payen was supposed to be deported to Haiti but a judge blocked the move because the paranoid schizophrenic criminal was deemed too insane. He was reportedly living in a crack house at the time of his terror arrest.

Forget the hamdemic—beef is now the meat to worry about. Valley Meats, a producer in Illinois, recalled nearly 96,000 pounds of potentially contaminated beef on Thursday. The confiscated meat may be linked with an outbreak of E. coli in the Cleveland area, where three unconnected people were diagnosed with a related strand. The meat in question is packaged under the names 3S, Grillmaster, J&B, Ultimate, and—we know you have this one in your fridge—Thick 'N Savory.

They've experienced impossible forces, endured grueling space walks, and performed remarkable feats, but now the crew of the Atlantis space shuttle is facing its biggest foe yet: the inclement weather of Cape Canaveral, Fla. After a successful 11-day trip to refurbish the Hubble Space Telescope, the Atlanis has been delayed in its return to earth because of rain. NASA has announced that though it was scheduled to return on Friday, because of the forecast, the Atlantis will return on Saturday instead.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates worked for George W. Bush in the Pentagon, but in an interview today he firmly backed up his new boss. Gates said Obama had no other choice but to order Guantanamo's shutdown, saying "the name itself is a condemnation" of U.S. anti-terror policy. Former vice president Dick Cheney blasted Obama yesterday for endangering the nation by closing the site, but Gates said that "fear-mongering" about terror detainees being transferred to U.S. supermax prisons is unfounded. "We have many terrorists in United States' prisons today," he said, and no one has ever escaped a supermax prison before.

George W. Bush’s neighbors have, apparently, greeted him as a liberator: “I no longer feel that great sense of responsibility that I had when I was in the Oval Office,” the former president said to high school students in New Mexico (he’s apparently not ready for the college-graduation circuit). “And frankly, it’s a liberating feeling.” He relayed a story about cleaning up after his dog: “And there I was, former president of the United States of America, with a plastic bag on my hand. Life is returning back to normal.” Bush declined interviews after, and no video cameras were allowed inside.

McClatchy has assembled a long list of the distortions and exaggerations in Dick Cheney’s speech yesterday. The former vice president’s defenders will probably just dismiss McClatchy as the “liberal media,” but what have they to say to Senator John McCain? “When you have a majority of Americans, seventy-something percent, saying we shouldn't torture, then I'm not sure it helps for the Vice President to go out and continue to espouse that position," the senator from Arizona and former presidential candidate tells The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg. "[Cheney] believes that waterboarding doesn't fall under the Geneva Conventions and that it's not a form of torture. But you know, it goes back to the Spanish Inquisition."

Where do Rush Limbaugh’s fans come from? Oklahoma. According to a poll by Public Policy Polling, Oklahomans prefer Limbaugh to Obama 56 to 44. President Obama, who only got 34 percent of the state’s vote, has an approval rating there of 38 percent. Limbaugh’s approval, despite the fact that people prefer his “vision,” was only one point greater at 39.