[dropcap]D[/dropcap]avid Frum writes in the Atlantic that this was the day that Barack Obama gave his Ronald Reagan speech. He told the Estonians, and all the former Eastern Bloc countries now in NATO, that a Russian attack on them was no different in his eyes than an attack on the United States. “[T]he defense of Tallinn and Riga and Vilnius is just as important as the defense of Berlin and Paris and London,” Obama said. “Article 5 is crystal clear. An attack on one is an attack on all. So if, in such a moment, you ever ask again, who’ll come to help, you’ll know the answer: the NATO alliance, including the armed forces of the United States of America, right here, present, now.”
The rise of ISIS tests the Rand Paul non-interventionist wing of the Republican Party, including Rand Paul himself. Via the Washington Post.
Is ISIS gathering at the border? Or maybe the question is this: How did ISIS become part of the immigration debate? Via Charles Blow in the New York Times.
The story in Ferguson suggests that the greatest threat to our liberty is not so much big government as it is local government. Via the New Republic.
The Democrats’ chances of keeping the Senate seem to be getting slightly better. How could that be? Via the Washington Post. Ask Nate Silver. He rolls out his FiveThirtyEight Senate predictions and sees Republicans ahead.
Three photographs – a gun, a rifle, a knife — haunt the writer. Via Jill Lepore in the New Yorker.
In Colorado this summer, interns and two staffers at the Gazette explored the plight of Colorado Springs’s sizable homeless population. Stories, videos and analysis: oh my! Check it out. Via the Gazette.
Steal from Goodwill customers? Really? On Tuesday, the non-profit reported that customers’ credit card information was stolen from stores in more than 300 stores nationwide, including locations in Woodland Park, Canon City, Fountain, Grand Junction, Pueblo and Colorado Springs. Goodwill is investigating a contractor whose payment system they say is responsible for the security breach. Via the Pueblo Chieftain.
When Colorado legalized the sale of recreational marijuana last year, regulators were so worried that supply would overflow the market that they set strict limitations on the number of pot-growers. So strict that the market price of an ounce was more than quadruple black-market price. Now, new production rules are up for review. How much pot is enough pot for the smokers of Colorado? Via the Durango Herald.
[Photo by Shannon Donahue, WEBN-TV, via Flickr/Creative Commons.]
