Christie Fires Aide as Probe Begins over Bridge Scandal, Nebraska Officials Seize Toddler over Swearing, Brown Wants to Spend All of California's Money: P.M. Links

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  Lucas Films

  The U.S. Attorney in New Jersey is opening a probe over the claims that Gov. Chris Christie's office orchestrated traffic snarls by closing lanes on George Washington Bridge as political retaliation. Christie gave an amazingly long press conference about it and fired an aide for lying to him about the incident (not for the incident itself).

• Authorities in Nebraska took a toddler and three other children into custody connected to a video showing the child using profanities, to the amusement and encouragement of nearby adults. A local police union is under fire for sharing the video on Facebook.
• It's not just a frustrating rule for U.S. airports anymore: Two Russian airports are banning bringing any liquids on flights as a security measure in advance of the Olympics.
• On the third anniversary of the Tucson shootings, former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords said she wouldn't rule out running for office once again.
• Apparently everything's now just fine in California and it still doesn't have an extremely high unemployment rate and bankrupt cities, as Gov. Jerry Brown's new proposed budget is his biggest ever, increasing state spending by more than 8 percent.
• Now that Disney is in charge of the Star Wars empire, it's putting together a committee to determine what various other stories told in the universe outside the movies are actually "canon." Start writing your angry letters now because Jar Jar Binks will most assuredly make the cut.

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