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Leaky White House, Paul Krugman Pwned, Frisky NYPD: P.M. Links

J.D. Tuccille | 6.7.2012 4:30 PM

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  • Convenient leaks of national security information that paint the president in a positive light are raising eyebrows and sparking investigations. High-level material, including conversations in the situation room, have fingers pointing at the White House.

  • Members of Congress concerned about the "fiscal cliff" looming at the end of the year  when tax cuts expire and automatic spending cuts (theoretically) kick in are quietly meeting and crafting bills to spur their colleagues to do something.
  • Staring fiscal reality in the eye and daring it to blink, France's new Socialist President Francois Hollande issued a decree lowering the retirement age for many workers from an already-low 62 to 60. Businesses and economists call the move damaging to the country's finances and competitiveness.
  • After Paul Krugman castigated his country for pulling itself out of a recession with fiscal discipline, Estonia's President Toomas Hendrik Ilves took to Twitter to tear the New York Times pundit a new one for pontificating outside his field of expertise and being "smug, overbearing & patronizing."
  • As the controversy over New York City's stop-and-frisk policy grows, dissenting city officials are meeting with members of Congress and Justice Department officials in hopes of prompting a federal investigation. The NYCLU offers a smart phone app for tracking the practice.
  • Supposed links between criminal activity and marijuana dispensaries are used by prohibitionists to justify crackdowns in defiance of public support for medical marijuana, but a UCLA study found no such association.
  • An Australian scientist hs found a way to prevent mosquitoes from spreading dengue fever. He infects mosquitoes with Wolbachia bacteria, which prevents the insects from carrying dengue, and then releases them into the wild.

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NEXT: UKIP Pulls Libertarians in the Wrong Direction

J.D. Tuccille is a contributing editor at Reason.

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