This picture, from the Morton County, N.D., Sheriff’s Department, from the scene of the Dakota Access Pipeline protest should spark another discussion about that equipment the U.S. government gave away to police departments with all the money it had to fight terrorism. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Archives for October 2016
When reporters parachute in to provide sports coverage to an audience which hates sports, you get the kind of story NPR provided today in a blast against the fans of the Cleveland Indians. Read more →
The best way to understand Dylan’s silence is to understand Sartre’s concept of ‘bad faith.’ Read more →
The social media generation has given us a new type of criminal; the type to break into buildings just to take video of breaking into buildings. Read more →
Baby Boomers, the same crowd that put ABBA in the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame, thank you very much, will probably put up some sort of spirited defense against a column by the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank. . But there’s one problem with trying: Milbank has a point.
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The last time the people of Edina knew what it was like not to win the girl’s state tennis tournament, there was a Clinton in the White House, the Dow was breaking through 6,000, Princess Diana and Prince Charles were still married, and the DVD player had just been introduced. Read more →
Jim Schlegel, the 97-year-old veteran of Pearl Harbor whose daughter wanted him to see one more Chicago Cubs World Series game, is going to see one more Chicago Cubs World Series game. Read more →
Today’s must-read item comes from Mara Gottfried at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, who tells the story of Ali Bility, a 17-year-old who was in the starting lineup last night when Como Park’s football squad took the field.
Suffering from depression, Bility had attempted suicide last winter. Read more →
The people who work at newspapers drive the local news agenda. What they can’t do — as the St. Cloud Times’ story today proved again — is provide coverage of the execution of a community’s soul. Read more →
We have a little more information to share with you today on yesterday’s top story where police in Portland, Maine arrested a tree while cross a street. Asher Woodworth said he wanted you to rethink your expectations. Read more →
There’s a pretty good joke making the rounds ahead of the World Series, which starts tonight in Cleveland.
‘It’s been so long since the Cubs or Indians have won a World Series that the last time they did, the presidential campaign of 2016 hadn’t even started yet.’ Read more →
I’m in the radio business for one last day today, filling in for Tom Weber on MPR News. Read more →
Hoover was a World War II fighter pilot, a former Air Force test pilot and the chase plane pilot for Chuck Yeager when he broke the sound barrier for the first time. Read more →
Here’s what I learned from yesterday’s radio show on obituaries: Quite a few people have obits of people they didn’t know taped to their refrigerators. Read more →