Leave it to the French Canadians to turn a noisy pots-and-pans march into something artful, elegant and alluring.

President Obama’s attack on Mitt Romney for his time at the private equity firm Bain Capital drew words from Newark mayor and rising Democratic Party star Cory Booker. Booker scolded both campaigns for their attacks before praising Bain for supporting and growing businesses, a move that appears to belie his dependence on Wall Street for success in a potential Senate run.

This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: A student loan crisis just in time for graduation and “More Powerful Than Dynamite” author Thai Jones.

The Senate is moving to renew the soon-to-expire 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which authorized the U.S. government to monitor American citizens’ emails and telephone calls without a warrant. Former National Security Agency Director William Binney has warned that its vast data mining program, which operates under the amendments, could “create an Orwellian state.”

Mitt Romney has a new economic goal, one that ostensibly backtracks from the benchmark he set for himself earlier this month. The presumed GOP presidential nominee told Time magazine’s Mark Halperin on Wednesday that he would get the unemployment rate down to 6 percent in his first term.

In a disturbing rant posted to YouTube, a North Carolina pastor is seen calling for gays and lesbians to be killed by fencing them off in an electrified pen. The pastor, identified as Charles L. Worley, is reported to have made the homophobic remarks May 13 after President Obama came out in support of legalizing same-sex marriage.

On Sunday, veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars led thousands of people in a march on the NATO summit in Chicago, at the end of which 50 former soldiers renounced the wars by throwing their military service medals toward the building where leaders were gathered.

Actor with a capital “A” James Lipton has a master class for the presidential contender: “Since politics and performance have become pretty much fused, and since you’ve been criticized by some for not coming across as authentic to your public, maybe we can sort of work on that today.”

Facebook made its much-anticipated initial public offering. TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts had second thoughts about a $10 million negative ad campaign against President Obama. The G-8 convened at Camp David. And JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon faced tough questions in the wake of his company’s $2 billion loss.

Despite claiming he does not believe in the birther conspiracy theory, Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett has threatened to keep Obama off the state’s general election ballot if he can’t verify the president was born in Hawaii.