Bob CollinsThousands of government bodies all over the United States — including the Minnesota House and Senate — open their meetings and sessions with a prayer. Today the U.S. Supreme Court gave the practice its blessing. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Crime and Justice
You have a choice, Minnesota. You can either avoid the pothole craters or you can get a ticket for straying outside your lane. What will it be? Read more →
It fairly boggles the mind the extent to which one person in one spot and one moment was the difference between that safety and an unspeakable mass murder.
Or does it?
Read more →
There’s no question that driving Minnesota highways, especially those in the metro, is a frustrating experience. Anybody can get a driver’s license and it shows daily in the incompetent and dangerous moves we all see, and sometimes participate in.
How far are we willing to go to change that behavior? Read more →
A Minnesota school has dropped a requirement that prom goers be tested for drinking before being allowed to attend.
The Minnesota American Civil Liberties Union said Perham High School’s requirement is likely unconstitutional and ineffective.
Read more →
In upholding the constitutionality of Minnesota’s law allowing a 50-year order for protection for victims of domestic abuse, the Minnesota Supreme Court was sharply divided today on the question of whether abuse or stalking of a mother constitutes abuse of the children when it comes to deciding whether parenting time should be restricted. Read more →
There’s no nice way to describe what happened in Oklahoma last evening, where for weeks people have been trying to tell a state that attempting to execute two men using experimental drugs was a bad idea .
No doubt, some people will say, ‘good, let ’em suffer,’ but public policy shouldn’t be dictated by people without a functioning soul. Read more →
Let this be a lesson: pay your taxes on time. Read more →
You don’t enjoy some constitutional rights inside a school that you have outside one, at least if you’re a student. Read more →
The Minnesota Supreme Court today warned district court judges to be more wary when statistics are used to civilly commit people who have served their sentences for sexual crimes. Read more →
Near the end of the Vietnam War, most states lowered the drinking age to 18 on the theory that if young men can be pulled off the street and sent to war via the draft, they should be able to buy a drink.
The war ended, the draft ended, and the federal government started threatening to withhold highway funding to any state that didn’t raise the drinking age back to 21. Read more →
Does the danger pass when burglars are no longer capable of standing up and harming you? Or does it end when they’re dead?
The case had all the makings of a nationwide debate on the right of people to defend themselves in their own homes. It was tailor-made for the demagoguery that accompanies shootings like this. But for the most part, that hasn’t happened. Read more →
A Woodbury family, concerned the man who killed their daughter would be paroled, can rest easier.
Tony Roman Nose, who was 17 when he stabbed and raped 18-year-old Jolene Stuedemann in her home in 2000, will not be getting out of prison ever, the divided Minnesota Supreme Court ruled today. Read more →
That Todd Hoffner has decided to take his old Minnesota State Mankato football job back shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s followed the story since he was accused of child pornography for using his state-owned cellphone to take bath time videos of his children. Everything about the case has been a head-scratcher from the start. Read more →
In recent weeks,there have been some astounding acts of grace in Minnesota courtrooms. Read more →