From CNN:

Energy giant BP has hired a Washington-based, bipartisan political consulting firm to produce its new aggressive national advertising push, including a national TV spot released Thursday, CNN has learned.

Sources familiar with the arrangement say that Purple Strategies, headed up by veteran political consultants Steve McMahon, a Democrat, and Alex Castellanos, a Republican, produced new advertisements now running on both television and in newspapers.

There's a nice economics fight going on between William Galston and Paul Krugman. Galston, essentially, adopts the posture of the debt hawk, citing concerns from Carmen Reinhardt and Kenneth Rogoff that increasing debt to more than 90 percent of GDP (the U.S. won't get there for a decade) will cramp our growth.

Consumer spending is 70 percent of the American economy, so if consumers can’t or won’t spend we’re back in the soup. Yet the government just reported that consumer spending stalled in April – the first month consumers didn’t up their spending since last September. Instead, consumers boosted their savings, probably because they’re worried about the slow pace of job growth (next Friday’s report will likely show gains, but the number will continue to be tiny compared to the overall ranks of the jobless), as well as a lackluster “recovery.” They’re also still carrying enormous debt burdens. One in four homeowners is still underwater. And median wages are going nowhere.

Today, the Senate is set to approve an agreement between Sens. Chris Dodd and Richard Shelby, the top Democrat and Republican, respectively, on the Senate Banking committee, to remove a $50 billion liquidation fund from the financial reform bill. While this may pave the way for Republican votes, it's worrying politics for the Democrats. Just look at this, from The Washington Post:

The tentative agreement to limit the chances of future bailouts came as the Senate delayed for another day its initial votes on amendments to legislation to address the causes of the 2008 financial crisis.

Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a massive employment discrimination case against Wal-Mart could go forward. The dispute over the nearly decade-old case centered on whether it was appropriate for the plaintiffs to be "certified" as a class, which is necessary for the courts to proceed with the case. One of the central questions in certification is a determination as to whether a class action is the appropriate method to go about litigating the case. Wal-Mart claims that the number of plaintiffs is simply too large -- over a million strong.