Must Reads

• Syria escalates full-scale crackdown.
• What John Boehner will tell Wall Street about the debt ceiling.
• Gas prices may have peaked.

• The April jobs report is significantly better than feared: Non-farm payrolls swelled by 244,000 as the unemployment rate ticked up to 9.0%.
• The video of bin Laden’s burial at sea may be released.
• Al-Qaeda after bin Laden.
• He was plotting U.S. rail attacks.

–Tension with Pakistan isn’t subsiding —  “There’s no doubt [bin Laden] was protected by some in the ISI.” — but there’s no alternative to the relationship.

–Obama will visit Ground Zero today.

–Biden’s bipartisan deficit talks begin.

• Pakistani ambassador denies complicity, chalks missing bin Laden up to “incompetence” or “overconfidence.” 
• Panetta thinks if it wasn’t incompetence, it had to be complicity.
• Qualified defense of Pakistan begins on the Hill.

• White House backs off claims bin Laden was armed, used human shield.
• The operation, blow by blow.
• Obama mulls releasing photo of bin Laden’s body.
• Did the U.S. really need closure or comfort in his death?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNYmK19-d0U]

• Death arrives for the master terrorist.

• Some Senate Dems join GOP threats to vote against the debt limit increase without accompanying deficit reduction measures.
• Those with reelection campaigns looming are talking about it a lot.
• Obama visits storm ravaged south.

• Weak growth (as expected) in the first quarter: The economy grew at a 1.8% annual rate.
• Incoming Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s central challenge at the Pentagon will be the budget.
• With increasing military and intelligence overlap, David Petraeus’ selection for the CIA might be explained in one word: Pakistan.
• From the

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• Republicans still better at chicken: Speaker Boehner says he’s prepared not to hold a debt limit vote if he’s not getting his way.
• A USA Today/Gallup poll holds some pretty good numbers for Republicans on the budget: 48% support reducing deficits with mostly spending cuts; 37% support a mix of cuts and tax hikes; 11% prefer mostly

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• WikiLeaks drops Gitmo files, though revelations are few. The documents tell the story of what alleged plotters were doing on 9/11.
• The Washington Post reports out the slow death of the effort to close Guantanamo:

• John McCain is on the ground in Benghazi, Libya. Bruce Crumley sees the trip as a bellwether of escalation.
• The war of attrition has slowed.
• Chris Cillizza mulls the possibility that the 2012 GOP field is already ossified.
• Sure, Palin was overcovered and Donald Trump is overcovered, but what jumps out on this chart from Nate

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• The 2011 TIME 100, our list of influentials written by their peers, is out. It’s worth clicking around, but here are a few from our neck of the woods: President Obama on Gabby Giffords, Scott Walker on Paul Ryan, Oprah on Cory Booker, Mitch Daniels on Chris Christie, Rahm Emanuel on Joe Biden, Rush Limbaugh on Michele Bachmann,

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