• Oklahoma’s two Republican senators made sure everyone knew they were against tornado disaster aid for their state unless there were offsets. (Roll Call)
• And before you cry “hypocrite!” just know that Sen. Inhofe thinks Oklahoma tornado aid he’ll vote for is “totally different” from the “slush fund” Hurricane Sandy aid he voted against. (MSNBC)
• But, yes, you should cry “hypocrite!” And then almost immediately read this piece by Salon’s Joan Walsh. (Salon)
• “There is no legitimate fiscal or economic case for demanding disaster aid be offset. It’s pure ideology.” (Ben White)
• In fact, remind yourself how your representative voted on Hurricane Sandy relief. (Pro Publica)
• Of course, it sounds like Sen. Coburn is trying to slowly walk back a comment he probably didn’t need to make less than 24 hours after the disaster. (Chad Pergram)
• It also doesn’t sound like their fellow Republicans are flocking to the senators’ defense. (Chad Pergram) and (Amanda Terkel)
• Sen. Coburn, for one, is an old hand at undermining disaster relief aid. (Think Progress)
• House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer claims “House Dems are prepared to be the majority of YES votes” on an Oklahoma tornado aid bill. (Frank Thorp V)
• It might also help to offset the sort of tax breaks that turn billionaires into, well, bigger billionaires. (Jonathan Larsen)
• Mind you, this entire argument may end up being academic: “Don’t assume there needs to be an actual vote on tornado aid to Okla. FEMA has $13B in emergency relief funds left for FY ’13.” (Marty Kady)
• One — admittedly early — estimate of the damage has it reaching $2 billion. (CNBC)

• Republicans are trying to turn Obamacare and the IRS scandal into the peanut butter and chocolate of GOP talking points. (CBS News)
• In fact, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell predicts Obamacare will be the “biggest issue” in the next election. Again. (Igor Volsky)
• Mark Levin, the thinking man’s Sean Hannity, says “the Obama mob using third world tactics to silence Obamacare opponents.” You know, like that Twitter hashtag you see: “My leader is forcing me to have affordable health care #ThirdWorldProblems” (Mark Levin)
• Still, a new poll shows the attacks so far haven’t dinged Obama’s approval rating. (First Read)
• Also, judging by the number of followers, the Twitter feed the House GOP has unveiled to spread the message of doom and gloom – The Red Tape Tower – doesn’t seem to be sweeping online America off its feet. (The Red Tape Tower)
• Questions about Obamacare? Don’t quite know what it is? Thought it was a sedan produced by Chevy in the ‘70s? Kaiser Family Foundation has you covered. (Kaiser Family Foundation)
• Interestingly, one gap in the current law is that it doesn’t require employers to cover spouses. (Mother Jones)
• Obama: “…the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare…” (Philip Rucker)

• Heritage Action has asked — ordered? — Speaker John Boehner to “avoid bringing any legislation to the House Floor that could expose or highlight major schisms within the conference.” That way, the GOP doesn’t “do anything that shifts the focus” from the IRS or Benghazi controversies. (National Review)
• Those votes it wants to block include ones on internet sales tax, immigration reform and the farm bill — the latter, interestingly enough, because the House’s deep cuts to the so-called “food stamps” program aren’t deep enough. (The Hill) and (Chad Pergram)
• Now why would it make this demand for Permanent Obstruction? Well, one reason is that vote on comprehensive immigration reform. Heritage likely wants to erase memories of an embarrassing, much-maligned “think” piece on why reform wouldn’t work (which cost the author his job at Heritage). (Mother Jones)
• But the financial aspect of this demand can’t be missed either. Legally speaking, this isn’t Heritage making the demand — it’s Heritage Action, a 501(c)4. Thus, what HA is demanding  is that Congress focus exclusively on punishing the IRS for daring (if poorly) to question the motives of politically motivated 501(c)4’s — such as itself. (Heritage Action)
• Which means that, ironically, Heritage Action is hoping to use these hearings and any roadblocks for campaign finance reform they produce as a sort of shield law — the kind that Congress doesn’t want to allow for journalists. (Politico)
• What is a 501(c)4 exactly? A “social welfare” organization. (Wonk Blog) and (Josh Barro)
• So what constitutes “social welfare” work? Well, previous examples have included claims that candidates want to gut Medicare or have refused to prosecute rapists. (Slate)
• “The biggest take-away from the I.R.S. mess should be that our campaign-finance system is in desperate need of overhaul.” (Steven Rattner)
• In fact, University of Illinois Law professor, John Colombo, believes we should eliminate them all-together. The reason: the rules are open to interpretation, which invites “wholesale noncompliance, which is pretty much what we have.” (The New York Times)

• The final verdict? “There is no evidence of a grand conspiracy to invent a #Benghazi cover story in the email dump.” (Steven Dennis)
• “The internal debate did not include political interference from the White House, according to the e-mails.” (The Washington Post)
• You can read the emails here. (First Read)
• The key source of debate was between CIA and State Department. (The Atlantic)
• “That is the opposite of the line peddled by GOP sources Friday portraying some kind of sinister role for WH.” (Ryan Lizza)
• The big item out of the emails is that then-CIA Director David Petraeus was unhappy with the final with the final talking points. (The New York Times)
• “Then CIA-Director David Petraeus objected to the final talking points because he wanted to see more details revealed to the public.” (The Associated Press)
• This is probably another skewed poll but Pew Research says most Americans aren’t paying attention to the Benghazi investigation. In fact the number — 44% — is less than the amount by which Mitt Romney won. (Pew Research)
• “Larger journalism problem now than when my Dad cited it as 1st WaPo ombudsman 43 yrs ago: ‘tendency to make big pictures out of small facts’.” (John Harwood)
• But it’s not just that Republicans were wrong (mostly). They also unfairly maligned Susan Rice and owe her an apology. (Jeffrey Goldberg) and former NSC spokesman (Tommy Vietor)
• “So are Rs drifting from Rice’s Benghazi talking points to Carney’s WH talking points about Rice’s Benghazi talking points?” (John Harwood)
• “Her crime was simply to lean on a document that was produced in a chaotic atmosphere by bureaucrats working with imperfect information and perhaps some turf to protect.” (Bloomberg View)

In an interview Tuesday with Martin Bashir, Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma responded to one of the more hyperbolic claims regarding the inevitable demise of the Obama administration:

I don’t think this is the equivalent of Watergate or Iran-Contra. There’s a big difference when literally somebody in the White House was ordering these things. This is not something anyone ordered. This is not an outcome anybody intended.

Still, Rep. Cole on Monday joined the list of nearly 150 members of the House of Representatives who are sponsoring a bill called Resolution 36, which calls for the creation of a select Congressional committee to investigate Benghazi. Echoing the bill’s lead sponsor, Rep. Frank Wolf, Rep. Cole explained that having five different Congressional committees conducting five different investigations has created a “Babel of voices” on Benghazi. “One single committee, I think, would probably help clarify the issue,” he said.

Select committees, of course, are usually reserved for scandals such as–yes, you guessed it–Watergate and Iran-Contra.

You can watch Rep. Cole’s interview here:

• The big news of the day: Scrubbed and washed talking points that prove — something, something, something — conspiracy! (ABC News)
• Of course, there’s an update to the story that kind of undercuts the WAR ENDS IN EUROPE play it’s getting on the right. (Think Progress)
• In case you want to see how the talking points evolved, line by line, The Atlantic Wire, is there for you. (The Atlantic Wire)
• If you read one article on the Benghazi Truthers today, read the always must-read Elspeth Reeve in The Atlantic Wire. The crux is that even the Truthers can’t agree on what Benghazi is about. (The Atlantic Wire)
• Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum has an excellent summation/timeline about what you can rightly criticize the State Department and White House — and why that still does not justify Republicans’ “Watergate!” reaction. (Mother Jones)
• Real Clear Politics’s Sean Trende has a very sober, more conservative, analysis tweeted in 5 parts. All of it is worth reading, but here’s the gist: “This just strikes me as a single that [Republicans] are trying to insist is a home run, hurting their credibility in the process.” (Part 1), (Part 2), (Part 3), (Part 4), (Part 5), (Part 6)
• Interestingly, a new “insider” account from a Mitt Romney adviser claims Romney’s exceptionally poor response to the attacks left him, “naked, embarrassed and disarmed.” (Swampland)
• The RNC has released the 2012 Benghazi web ad they originally meant to air during the campaign. This has all the feel of the Yankees selling half-off tickets on Groupon as attendance drops: trying to get at least a little play for something no one wanted to buy in the first place. (The Note)
• The outcome of Wednesday’s Benghazi hearing? Republicans want Hillary Clinton to testify again. (The Hill)
• In fact, Karl Rove’s Super PAC has released a Benghazi-themed anti-Hillary Clinton ad, featuring Wednesday’s testimony — just in case you didn’t know what the conservative griping was really about. (The Huffington Post)
• The anti-Hillarying has definitely begun. (Politico)
• And, of course, there’s talk of impeachment from the usual quarters. (Talking Points Memo)

“The dam is about to break on Benghazi,” South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said on Fox News Monday.

According to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the “cover up” involving the deaths of four Americans is “more serious than Watergate” and will likely drive the president to an early exit from the Oval Office. On Monday, Huckabee told listeners of his radio show:

I believe that before it’s all over, this president will not fill out his full term. I know that puts me on a limb… But this is not minor. It wasn’t minor when Richard Nixon lied to the American people and worked with those in his administration to cover up what really happened in Watergate. But, I remind you—as bad as Watergate was, because it broke the trust between the president and the people, no one died. This is more serious because four Americans did in fact die.

This is hardly the first time that Republicans have compared Benghazi to Watergate. Although it may resonate in certain circles, the comparison to Watergate may also raise as many problems for Republicans who see a major scandal behind the deadly September 2012 attacks on the U.S. consulate in Libya. That’s because, with Watergate, it was easy to see what was being covered up. (There was, after all, that little matter of a break-in at the Democratic National Committee.) With Benghazi, even the biggest supporters of more investigation seem to have a hard time saying what the White House is trying to hide.

For example, in a recent interview on FOX & Friends featuring Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a perennial voice for the GOP about the administration’s misdeeds in Benghazi, the Utah Republican struggled in his answer to a straightforward question: “Congressman, it sounds like what you’ve described, it sounds like there’s been a cover up, but what we’re they trying to cover up?”

“Well, again, this is why we’re fighting for the truth,” Chaffetz said in a response not likely to persuade Benghazi skeptics that his “fight for the truth” amounts to anything more than an open-ended fishing expedition for material to damage his political opponents. Perhaps this is why Rep. Elijah Cummings,  the ranking Democrat on the committee that will hear from the co-called “whistle blowers” Wednesday, has criticized his Republican colleagues so sharply, saying, “Members of Congress have an obligation to actually investigate claims before coming to conclusions and making public accusations. Unfortunately, House Republicans have taken the opposite approach.”

On Tuesday, MSNBC host Martin Bashir talked about Benghazi with James Peterson of Lehigh University and Jonathan Alter of Bloomberg View. You can watch it here: 

• Gov. Howard Dean, who got the NRA’s endorsement in each of his six elections as Vermont’s governor, says the gropu is the “equivalent of the John Birch Society.” (Politico)
• Say this with me: Obama zombie target practice doll. (Salon) and (Buzzfeed)
• The NRA got a new president, and boy is he a class act. (Media Matters)
• He’s no Wayne LaPierre, though. Listen to Mr. NRA himself draw a line between the Boston Bombings and gun ownership. Oh, and try not to cringe. (The Huffington Post)
• We’ll all remember where we were when Texas Gov. Rick Perry defeated the Great Egg Menace. (NBC News)
• Criminals would never think that parents would hide their guns in their children’s rooms. Which is true. In a way. (Think Progress)
• And guess which “eat more chikin”-logoed fast food chain decided to appear at the NRA convention? I’ll give you a hint, they’re not very big on same-sex marriage. (Julie Bykowicz)
• Sarah Palin: Dressed for success. (Hillary Reinsberg)
• Oh, and former U.S. Senator Larry “wide stance” Craig, R-Airport mens’ room, was re-elected to the NRA’s board of directors. (James Hohmann)
• The NRA did take time this weekend to cut a check to Mark Sanford. But $2,000 almost sounds like an insult. (Ken Vogel)
• Scary but true: “Gun dealers whose licenses are revoked for misconduct can sell their inventories free from background checks.” (Politifact)

Theme #1: Positive Revisions

• The revisions to the Feb (from +268K to +332K) and March (+88K to +138K) payrolls numbers are what we called the “buried lede” in this business. (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
• And quite a few economists and finance types are pointing that out. (Duke St Journal) and (The Stalwart)
• “The revision bandwagon is joyfully full.” (Modeled Behavior)
• And keep April’s +165K in mind: “Since early in 2011, initial reports have been greatly understating total employment.” (The Economist)

Theme #2: A Persistent Recovery

• The recovery has been persistent — perhaps not quick enough — but definitely persistent. (Justin Wolfers) and (Ryan Avent) and (Neil Irwin)
• Job gains have averaged +169K/month over the last year. (David Wessel)
• “Job growth at that pace, if it persists, should be enough to gradually, albeit slowly, bring down the unemployment rate.” (Jared Bernstein)
• Also, the unemployment rate is at its lowest point since Dec. 2008. (Bespoke)
• In fact, one of the big highlights of this report is that people are going out and spending — despite the payroll tax hike — which is the reason for the rise in food-service and retail jobs. (Neil Shah)
• Mind you, the numbers are persistently good … if you have a college degree. Just take a look at how unemployment has changed (or hasn’t) depending on your level of education. (Justin Wolfers)
• One regrettably persistent trend: Slashing public sector jobs is still a drag on the economy. (Betsey Stevenson) and (Real Time Economics)
• Oh, and another persistent trend in this jobs report? Mitt Romney’s chief strategist has a problem with it. (John Harwood)
• Ditto, John Boehner and Eric Cantor. (Speaker John Boehner) and (Eric Cantor)

Theme #3: There Are Always Negatives

• Weekly hours worked is down, meaning the average person with a job is working slightly less than maybe they would like. (Neil Irwin) and (Duke St. Journal)
• That “manufacturing revolution” isn’t. (Business Insider)
• Lastly, a very funny joke if you’re planning to do standup in front of a bunch of economists any time soon: This jobs report had “more upward revisions than Reinhart-Rogoff.” (Pawel Morski)

• The convention features speeches from Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and Ted Cruz. You know: Winners. (NRA)
• Maybe during their speeches, they can discuss how more polling confirms that voting for an expansion of background checks helps your re-election chances. (Public Policy Polling) and (The Atlantic Wire)
• That’s unlikely, though. More likely will be discussion of the tin-foiled hat theory du jour, which has grabbed the attention of Truther Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla. (Talking Points Memo)
• Of course, as Republican Sen. Jeff Flake contends, those polls are skewed. Of course they are Mitt, I mean, Jeff. Of course they are. (Talking Points Memo)
• Then again, perhaps they can discuss Alabama’s approach to gun control laws: nullification. (Associated Press)
• Hopefully, they discuss this anti-background checks billboard that’s totally not racist. (Media Matters)
• Oh, and definitely, Ted Nugent – who’s listed as his own event at the convention – can expand upon his theory that military suicides are the result of “frustration” with Obama. Classy, Ted, classy. (Mediaite)
• Your NRA fact of the day: It’s poured “nearly $81 million into House, Senate and presidential races since the 2000 election cycle.” (The Center for Public Integrity)
• Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-New York, reminds us this week that one of the things the NRA is fighting for is restricting law enforcement from doing its job. (Think Progress)
• Ladies, the NRA hasn’t forgotten you. Listen to the the testimonials in this new NRA ad for its new TV channel for women: “I’m a diverse, educated woman.” (Guns.com)
• Heck, Snoop Dogg Lion gets it. (Politico)