- The U.S. added just 115,000 jobs in April, but BLS revises two prior months up. Unemployment dips to 8.1% thanks to a contracting labor force, now at its lowest participation rate since 1981.
- The State Department gets a new deal with China to bring activist Chen Guangcheng and his family back to the U.S.
- Pimco’s Mohamed El-Erian takes Wall Street to Defcon 3 on Congress’s year-end fiscal cliff.
- Fed vacancies still vacant.
- Virginia still a swing state.
- Philip Klein argues Romney is failing to make the race a referendum.
- A third of all super PAC donations come from 10 people.
- And the Charlotte Observer ed board puts birther flirts on notice.