The last post of the summer

Meteorological summer ends in just a few hours here in Chicago. Pity; it's been a decent one (for us; not so much for the Western US). I have a couple of things to read this afternoon while waiting for endless test sessions to complete on my work laptop:

• Former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev died at 91.
• Julia Ioffe looks at Ukraine's risky counter-offensive—that might just work.
• Washington Post columnist David Von Drehle, who has covered the XPOTUS since the 2016 campaign, wonders if the XPOTUS might go to jail because he used the classified documents as props.
• Jennifer Rubin wonders why some die-hards in the GOP have yet to back away slowly from the obviously-deranged XPOTUS.
• Peter Wehner lists three strategies to help get rid of the XPOTUS blues.
• Those XPOTUS blues might be why more people in the US now smoke pot than smoke tobacco.
• Margaret Talbot warns that Justice Sam Alito (R) hasn't even started destroying civil rights yet.
• Catalytic converter theft is up 1,215% since 2019, with Priuses near the top of the list.
• New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority will get rid of their colorful MetroCard vending machines next year. Aww.

And via Bruce Schneier, a group of local Chicago high schoolers will never give you up and never let you down.