Bob Collins retired from Minnesota Public Radio in 2019 after 12 years of writing NewsCut and pointing out to complainants that posts weren’t news stories. A son of Massachusetts, he was a news editor 1992-1998, created the MPR News regional website in 1999, invented the popular Select A Candidate, started several blogs, and every day lamented that his Minnesota Fantasy Legislature project never caught on.
Open a Walmart in town, see a spike in crime. That’s the upshot of an analysis by the
Woodbury Bulletin and Rivertown Media, which analyzed police calls in six cities in the east metro and found a disproportionate response to Walmart compared to other stores, such as Target. Read more →
Sadly, there is no shortage of “people are horrible” entrants today, but we’ve settled on whomever was driving a maroon van in rural Princeton, Minn., a week ago, stopping just long enough to steal a saddle from a 4-year-old girl. It was given to her as a birthday present. Read more →
It’s a curious reality of the Minnesota Supreme Court that you don’t often see the ‘Pawlenty wing’ and the ‘Dayton wing’ of the court lined up against each other, but two cases today highlighted a sharp division over sentences handed to drug offenders since a change in the state’s sentencing guidelines. Read more →
A triple play is one of the more rare events in baseball and a triple play in which a run scores must surely be among the most impossible feats.
Last night, however, Todd Frazier of the dastardly New York Yankees accomplished it.
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Anna Gibbs has died and if you know any history of the Ojibwe in Minnesota, there’s a fair chance Anna Gibbs had something to do with it.
The Bemidji Pioneer reports she died of liver cancer on Sunday at 72.
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There are 28 girls in Troop 6000. They’re all homeless. It’s the first-ever Girl Scout troop for girls who are homeless, reporter Jacob Pinter reports. Read more →
In a speech on the Senate floor, McCain scolded the process that he just flew back to Washington to uphold. Read more →
It’s entirely understandable that Sun Country Airlines would divert a flight from Minneapolis to Waco instead of Dallas on Sunday night, where weather presented a safety issue. After all, even Scott Crossfield had the ‘right stuff’h, but was no match for a thunderstorm. Read more →
Slate’s Leon Neyfakh writes today that the killing of Justine Damond (nee: Ruszczyk) has illustrated ‘the kind of flawed, ideological thinking that shows through when people need to protect their preexisting beliefs and irrational biases.’
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The president, in keeping with tradition, appeared at the largest gathering of Boy Scouts. And in destroying tradition, proceeded to ignore the unstated policy of staying away from partisan politics when talking to the kids. Read more →
The ordinance targeted public dances with cover charges and, in addition to the Sunday ban, made it illegal for prostitutes and drunks to attend public dances anytime. Read more →
The Minnesota State Patrol published a video today in an effort to try to call attention to the problem with distracted driving, a problem which everyone already knows about but continues to do anyway. Read more →
It’s likely that we won’t truly understand how horrific life with automobiles is until the era of the self-driving vehicle removes it from our culture. Read more →
The circumstances surrounding the shootings will be analyzed, of course, but it’s a sure bet they’ll be declared justified, given the circumstances.
Perhaps it’s time society ask if there’s more that it can do to help prevent people from reaching this level of desperation in the first place.
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Bob Collins
Woman threatens Somalis in Fargo parking lot