Biden Warned Against Afghan Escalation, Cops Daunted by Immigration Law, TSA Even Mistreats the Dead: P.M. Links

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  • A leaked memo dating to 2009 shows that Vice President Biden warned President Obama against sending more troops to Afghanistan. The book revealing the memo also says Obama deliberately avoided downbeat CIA assessments of the U.S. presence in that country.

  • A proposal by European Union President Herman Van Rompuy to unify debt and cap national budgets of member nations is already running into opposition from Germany, reducing chances that the continent will find itself shoe-horned into a parody of a centralized state.
  • Now that the Supreme Court has thumbs-upped a provision of Arizona law requiring police to check the immigration status of anybody they stop and suspect of illegal presence in the U.S., police fret that the new mandate will complicate their jobs and lead to lawsuits.
  • California's state government is severely overextended and dead broke. So, of course, it's … banning foie gras. Fanciers of the awesome delicacy are coming up with novel approaches for bypassing the law.
  • Uruguay's government says plans to legalize marijuana won't draw "drug tourists" to the country because sales to foreigners will be banned. So much for getting rid of the black market.
  • A deal ending a very public intra-family feud within the libertarian movement has Ed Crane stepping down at the Cato Institute to make way for John Allison, retired chairman and chief executive of BB&T Corp., as the new chief executive.
  • After photographing a rough arrest of a DUI suspect by Austin police, Antonio Buehler was arrested and charged with resisting arrest and felony harassment on a public servant, charges carrying up to ten years in prison. Private videos of the incident tell a story at odds with the police report.
  • A man traveling through the Orlando airport with his grandfather's cremated remains says a TSA agent laughed as she spilled ashes and bone fragments on the floor.

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