Job growth disappoints, new uncertainties on Health Care savings, ethics? not much, plus Boston Democrat pleads guilty.

Job growth disappoints

The nation's economy added 431,000 jobs in the month of May, and the unemployment rate dipped to 9.7 percent, the government reported Friday.

The job growth is lower than many expected and will not provide a boost to the Obama administration, which has been struggling to demonstrate that its economic policies are helping to ease the nation's epic unemployment problem.

The government said that 411,000 of the jobs created in May were temporary positions with the once-a-decade U.S. census and not the kind of employment that can drive a sustained economic recovery. (Continues here)

(Reuters) - Concern over rising U.S. debt could force lawmakers to take another crack at reining in healthcare costs long before any promised savings from President Barack Obama's sweeping overhaul are realized.

"The rising costs of healthcare will put tremendous pressure on the federal budget during the next few decades and beyond," Douglas Elmendorf, director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, wrote in his blog last week. "In CBO's judgment, the health legislation enacted earlier this year does not substantially diminish that pressure."

Resolution threatens power of Office of Congressional Ethics

TALK ABOUT BLAMING the messenger. The newly created Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent watchdog set up to review and, if warranted, forward ethics complaints to the official House ethics committee for further action, has taken its mission seriously. Too seriously, it seems, for the comfort of some lawmakers. Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), joined by 19 other members of the Congressional Black Caucus, last week introduced a resolution that would essentially neuter the ethics board, making it more difficult for OCE to launch investigations and inform the public of its findings.

Massachusetts: Ex-Senator Pleads Guilty in Bribe Case

A former state senator who was captured on video stuffing bribe money into her sweater and bra pleaded guilty Thursday in a case that could send her to prison for up to four years. Dianne Wilkerson, a Boston Democrat, entered the pleas to eight counts of attempted extortion at a hearing in Federal District Court. She was accused of taking $23,500 in bribes to secure a liquor license for a nightclub and legislation to pave the way for a commercial development.