State and National News

Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.

The White House, Democrats, and sympathetic elements of the media have been remarkably successful in establishing this idea: that President Obama, a pragmatist at heart, has sought to accommodate congressional Republicans time after time, only to be spurned by a party bent on rejecting his policies across the board. There's a problem with this notion. It's not true.

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- Reports: JPMorgan's Losses Could Top $4 Billion; Three Execs To Resign.

-- Yahoo CEO's Ousting Is Victory For Hedge Fund Pushing Change At Company.

Happy birthday, Mark Zuckerberg.

Not only do you turn 28 today, but at the end of the week Facebook stock is due to go public for the first time.

The social networking giant is expected to be valued around $100 billion and Zuckerberg's worth will then be around $18 billion, as Wired magazine's Steven Levy said earlier today on Morning Edition.

Darkly funny, suspenseful and cunningly plotted, Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl will be published June 5. In this exclusive selection from the book's opening, we meet Nick and Amy, the seemingly perfect couple whose alternating chapters soon reveal them to be as unreliable as spouses as they are as narrators.

NICK DUNNE

THE DAY OF

When Adam Spiegel rolls down the metal security doors at his Medford, Ore., store, a painting becomes visible. Officials told him to clean the graffiti or be fined. He tells the Mail-Tribune it's not graffiti: it's a mural. Some onlookers think the painting resembles a giant bong.

Sunday's news that Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson was stepping down in the wake of questions about his credibility is being followed this morning with accounts about how this is a victory for an activist hedge fund that's been pushing for changes at the Internet search giant.

As the Mercury News reports:

When Gac Filipaj fled war-torn Yugoslavia in 1992, he became a refugee in New York. He took a janitor's job at Columbia University because it included free tuition. But he first had to learn English. After a dozen years, he received a bachelor's degree in classics over the weekend.

Grooves are important to John Talabot — they're pivotal. That's the case with most dance-music producers, but there's something especially sleek about the Spanish producer's debut album, ƒIN.

"Destiny" presents an aesthetic that would work well in heavy rotation at the world's most extravagant fashion shows: The tempo ought to fall perfectly in sync with the bolt strut of a highly paid runway model. It could just be subconscious catering to the world of couture, but nothing about the music Talbot produces seems likely to go out of style.

Three high-ranking executives, including one of the most powerful women on Wall Street, are expected to resign from JPMorgan Chase this week because of their roles in the $2.3 billion loss the bank recently suffered when some risky trades blew up in its face.

The Wall Street Journal, which broke that news, also reports that JPMorgan's losses from the "giant trading blunder" keep growing. It cites "people familiar with the situation," as its sources.