Wiretap: Thinking Colorado, voters ponder pot elsewhere

 

Alaska and Oregon are the next two states to vote on legalizing marijuana. And the vote, Politico reports, will be a referendum on the Colorado experiment, which, depending on which ad you see, is either a grand success or an unmitigated disaster. Take your pick. The polls say that here in Colorado, we’re fairly happy with the way things are going. And since the whole experiment has barely begun, there have been no real studies yet of the impact. But since when did politicians need actual data? For some, it’s enough to go the Chris Christie route. It was Christie, of course, who pronounced that in the new Colorado, “head shops popping up on every corner.”

The border crisis is first and foremost a humanitarian crisis. But then, as always, there are the politics of the matter. And for Barack Obama, the politics are complicated. Via the Washington Post.

In a New York Times report, the author takes a long, detailed look at what happened in one case where a woman on campus reported a rape – and how she wished she hadn’t. Whatever else happened, the victim did not achieve George Will’s “coveted status.”

Discovering what life is like during the harrowing bombing in Gaza – by reading Tweets. Via Vox.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is not only one of the all-time great basketball players. He’s also not a bad columnist. In his latest offering for Time, he explains why even though LeBron James is going back to Cleveland, he can’t really go home again.

Are millennials really living in their parents’ basements? Wonkblog sent its investigative team to find out. Via the Washington Post.

When Nate Silver is not telling us who the next president will be, he’s onto whether this German World Cup team is the best ever. Via fivethirtyeight.

Back in Colorado, challengers to the ban on same-sex marriage went to federal district court Friday to try to get a state court stay lifted so that the marriages could go forward around the state. County clerks in Denver, Boulder and Pueblo have all issued marriage licenses to same sex couples. “The world as we know it has not crumbled,” the group argued. Via The Denver Post. See our update on this case.

Hold on to your hats in Rockwood — Two rafting vans with attached trailers were smashed and dented with windows blown out and tires flattened as they were lifted into the air by a microburst Saturday. A microburst is a strong and quick downdraft of air that spreads upon contact with the ground. “The reason they do so much damage is that when it starts to get windy slowly, things like trees will start to bend. But if you’re sitting at calm winds, and then within five seconds, you’re going to 80 mph, that’s when stuff breaks like twigs,” said Tom Renwick of the National Weather Service. Via the Durango Herald.

[Photo by caterliz via Flickr]

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