Radley Balko: Morning Links

– This is way too smart of a policy to ever get implemented. Plus, making birth control available over the counter takes a way an effective wedge issue, for both sides.

– Big news may be on the way from Mars.

– Your latest forensics scandal comes courtesy of Portland, Oregon.

– Police officer tries to shoot dog, shoots another police officer instead. This is not the same story from a couple weeks ago. Or a couple weeks before that.

– The puritanical campaign against e-cigarettes will very likely kill people.

– Here is what all your student loan debt bought. This shouldn’t be surprising. Grants and subsidized loans have made higher education a bottomless seller’s market. That means colleges and universities have an endless supply of money. There’s no competitive pressure to keep costs down. Hence, bureaucratic bloat.

– FBI SWAT raid ends with agents firing shots at an unarmed woman. It doesn’t appear that they found any contraband.

– Headline of the day.

– Via Reddit, and from earlier this year, this might be the most badass obituary ever written. A few highlights: “At 9, he settled a dispute with a pistol. At 13, he lit out for the Amazon jungle. At 20, he attempted suicide-by-jaguar. Afterward he was apprenticed to a pirate . . . he briefly managed a mink farm.”

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