• In These Times recaps the Top Labor Stories of 2012. 

• Check out the Daily Beast’s Best Longreads of 2012, including an expose of child  abuse at an evangelical school and the story of a rust belt teen’s climb from poverty.   

• A California court ruled that a man who admitted to impersonating a sleeping woman’s boyfriend in order to trick her into sex is not guilty of rape because he didn’t pretend to be her husband.

• Did unleaded paint and gasoline cause a historic drop in violent crime?

[Photo credit: Wander Mule, Creative Commons.]