Bob Collins
In a New York Times op-ed today, a black member of the Southern Baptist Convention says he’s done with the largest Protestant body in the nation. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
By Bob Collins
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.
Making the effort to get to the bottom of what happened more difficult, too, is the fact the two officers involved did not have their body cameras turned on, nor did the squad camera record the fatal shooting. Read more →
Maybe it’s only coincidence, but the gigantic insurer AIG has had a change of heart on the insurance coverage it provided to Madeleine Maldonado, 87, the Massachusetts woman who lost it when she wrote the wrong words on her check.
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The exodus of refugees from the United States was well documented last winter after several from Minneapolis nearly froze when they were dropped off near the border and told to walk.
The two men — one Somali and one Kenyan — stopped in Minneapolis only long enough to observe Ramadan, they told the CBC.
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Supporting our troops and honoring our veterans does not mean telling them what chemical experiments were conducted on them as far as the U.S. House of Representatives is concerned.
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NPR has been reluctant to use the word ‘lie’ when describing misstatements from the Trump administration. So it didn’t escape notice this week when an NPR reporter used it. Read more →
There were lots of pretty colors on the La Crosse radar on Tuesday night when storms moved through the area.
So you might have missed the blues and greens along the Mississippi River. A mayfly hatch. Read more →
Donna Chan placed two small ceramic dogs on the grave of her 27-year-old daughter Brittany, who died in May. They represented her service dogs who cared for her.
Someone stole them.
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History has not been kind to the Carter administration but it has been kind to Carter, a recognition that maybe in the here and now, we’re never as smart as we think we are.
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Todd Waters, 69, has died, or, as hoboes say, ‘he caught the Westbound.’ Waters was a hobo who proudly noted in 2012 that he’s been arrested about 70 times jumping railroad cars out of St. Paul for parts unknown and known. He was also a millionaire.
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The current contract between NPR and the SAG-AFTRA union ended at the close of last month and employees agreed to an extension while talks on a new contract continue. The extension runs out tomorrow night. Read more →
We suspect that Minnesota and other regional farmers are about to organize a ‘hay-lift’ to the farmers of North Dakota, because from the sound of things, they’re going to need it.
A look at this week’s U.S. Drought Monitor map reveals why. To the west of us, there’s a real problem underway.
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Maybe Brandon Rogers would’ve become a big star. Maybe not. We’ll never know.
He was trying to win the America’s Got Talent competition and had advanced past the auditions, but was killed in a car crash in mid-June.
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As tornadoes go these days, this one in eastern Iowa on Tuesday was comparatively small, but it still provided one of the better tornado videos we’ve ever seen.
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Of all the secrets that leak out on the planet on a daily basis, none is more well kept than the identity of sports mascots. So who’d like to reveal the true identity of TC Bear?
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