Bob CollinsA Minnesota police officer blocks your car in parking lot, shines his spotlight on you and asks you to take a breathalyzer test. You refuse and lose your license. Legal? The judges said yes. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Crime and Justice
The better story right now is the one Wemple has been pedaling all week: the New York Times appears to have been far more incompetent in its work than the federal authorities were in theirs. Read more →
The latest is the widely-reported assertion that Tashfeen Malik talked openly on social media about violent jihad. That’s led to criticism that the U.S. intelligence services failed to pick up even the most public warnings that she and her husband were a threat. Read more →
True, in the eyes of the law, Martin Shkreli is still an innocent man.
But still, $750 was the price of our sympathy.
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The FAA is treating the drones as aircraft, which they technically are. And it’s treating the operators as a pilots, which they technically aren’t. There are no requirements for training operators of drones, nor do they have to be licensed. Not yet, anyway. Read more →
The Minnesota Court of Appeals today reinstated a discrimination suit filed by a woman who says she was denied a job because she was pregnant when it was offered. Read more →
Bloomington police report there’s nothing to fear from an elderly man who lost his hat.
One can hardly blame the young girl walking home from school for saying “no” when he asked her to help look for it, or her father who called the cops, or the cops for taking it seriously. Read more →
An investigation by ProPublica and NPR into the damage inflicted by even the smallest release of private health information provides a good opportunity to re-examine a Minnesota case over who’s liable when a health care provider’s loose lips inflict damage. Read more →
Authorities in Grand Forks are hoping someone will recognize the man in the video that’s been posted on the Grand Forks Herald website. He appears to be the person who torched a Somali restaurant in the city on Tuesday morning.
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In the aftermath of Ferguson and Baltimore and New York, Steve Locke’s encounter with Boston police last week is the way encounters between the police and innocent people should go. Is it? Read more →
You’re a college kid caught with drugs. The authorities tell you you’re heading to prison unless you act as an informant. What do you do?
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The next time you read or hear a story on the state of the news media, think of this picture. It’s a far, far more accurate accounting of it than any research could reveal. Read more →
In the aftermath of the killings in San Bernardino, the nation has retreated to the corners we regularly inhabit. The political fighting that’s underway is exactly the same as what we’d expect. The stories in the media are exactly the stories we’ve come to expect.
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The fine Duluth News Tribune columnist Sam Cook asks an important question worthy of dominating the public discourse: Why do we distrust people? Why do we expect the worst? Read more →
One of the things I taught my kids when teaching them to drive was that stop signs and red lights don’t stop cars, especially in a state that loves its booze the way this one does. Read more →