Bob CollinsA federal jury has ruled that the “N word” is offensive no matter who says it. A federal jury in New York found the use of the word in the workplace is never acceptable, even when used between black coworkers and even when it’s intended to denote “friendship or endearment.” To emphasize its point, the Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Crime and Justice
Nate Minor
Corruption and Nigeria have a long history together. Examples run the gamut from small-time shakedowns to billions of dollars of oil disappearing. Read more →
Cherice Moralez, who was 14 at the time her high school teacher had sex with her, isn’t able to react to a Montana judge who sentenced the teacher to only 30 days in jail because the girl “was older than her years.” She killed herself shortly before her 17th birthday when the case became a Read more →
Other than 9/11, I can’t recall a sadder day in the Twin Cities than the one that happened 19 years ago today. Police received a call around 7 a.m. that a man was sleeping in a car in the parking lot of Sacred Heart Church at E. Sixth and Hope Streets. Ron Ryan, a 29-year-old Read more →
Being mentally ill will not get you a break under the mandatory five-year prison term for illegally possessing a firearm. Read more →
Unless something changes, 2013 in the Twin Cities may be the summer when people and politicians gave up and ceded their neighborhoods to the gangs. Just last week, for example, a beating on the East Side of Saint Paul led its residents to beg for officials to do something — anything, really. Nobody seems to Read more →
The Minnesota Court of Appeals today ruled the state has the right to strip the driver’s license of anyone who refuses officers’ orders to drive faster. Read more →
You’ll never see a more detailed and intimate visual report on Chicago’s gun violence problem than in the Tribune’s “Under the Gun” series. Read more →
More than 750 ex-nightclub employees are entitled to damages from their former employers for being forced to make up cash register shortages from their tips, the Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled. The high court’s ruling reverses the state Court of Appeals, which ruled in favor of now-closed party bars Drink and Spin Night Club. Minnesota Read more →
The campaigns to get people to stop watching their cellphones while they drive often seem like shoveling sand against the tide; nothing seems to be working to convince people there’s danger in it. So AT&T, Verizon, Spring, and T-Mobile commissioned Werner Herzog, the German filmmaker, to produce a documentary, featuring four tragedies: A paralyzed young Read more →
A close encounter with a police license plate scanner. Read more →
Wisconsin government declares, “Disperse ye Singers!” Read more →
The Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled today that a guardian can authorize the disconnection of life-support systems without the intervention of the courts in Minnesota.
The court ruled in the case of Jeffers Tschumy, a 53 year old man with no family who suffered from diabetes, effect of a stroke and partial paralysis from a spinal infection. A profession guardian was appointed in 2009 and when Tschumy suffered irreversible brain damage in April 2012, his guardian directed Abbott Northwestern Hospital to remove life-prolonging treatment. Read more →
One statute’s stood the test of time in Minnesota: You can’t sell booze to a minor. Period. Read more →
The gardening season of 2013 is going to go down as the one in which people sunk to the lowest level possible. It has become common this year to take flowers, trees, and potted plants from other people who did all the work. Can chaining up flower pots and bushes be far away? The latest Read more →