Bob CollinsThat seems like a fairly simple question, which is why it was a little odd on NPR’s Weekend Edition this weekend when Rep. Adrian Smith of Nebraska didn’t answer it.
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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.
It was a night for adults to show what they’re made of at Valleyfair amusement park in Shakopee last week. They’re not made of much, apparently.
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Homelessness doesn’t look like it’s getting any better in the Twin Cities, but it’s not for lack of trying — and there are successes. Check out La Crosse, Wis.
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Storm Lake, apparently, is considered a model of how to keep rural America alive. Attract plenty of immigrants who’ll work in the drudgery of a processing plant for poor wages, go through the growing pains, and weather the hostility toward them as if what happened to rural America is somehow their fault. Read more →
It’s too late to know now how many of the last men of Luverne wanted to be the last one living.
When their club started in 2010, they bought a bottle of hooch and 24 mugs. When there was only one left, he’d toast the other 23, all veterans of World War II.
Only the aged can reveal the loneliness of losing all of your friends, and nobody really likes drinking alone anyway.
So the three remaining vets aren’t going to wait.
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Things worked out fine for the Tampa Bay Rays at Target Field on Friday night. They won 5-to-2 over the local nine.
Not so much, though, for Steven Souza Jr., who just missed catching Kenny Vargas’ fly ball to right field in the seventh inning. Read more →
If art is occasionally meant to inflame, mission accomplished at the Walker Art Center where a new installation in the refurbished Sculpture Garden is the portrayal of gallows, one of which is inspired by the largest mass execution in U.S. history, the hanging of 38 Dakota Indians in 1862. Read more →
A lot of problems are going to be solved when self-driving cars become a thing. But first a big problem has to be solved: Consumers don’t want them. Read more →
For more than 70 years, the family of 2nd Lt. Alexander ‘Sandy’ Nininger Jr., who died when he charged alone into a group of Japanese invaders near Abucay, Bataan in 1942, have been trying to get him home.
It may take a Minnesota native to do it. Read more →
Reggie Oeltjen had an ambitious idea for a 65-year-old man. The Stewartville, Minn., man wanted to run across the state — that’s 280 miles in 20 days — for no other reason than he could.
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Wisconsin’s Bond brothers — all nine of them — signed up to fight in World War II. They all survived the war, returning to work in factories and on the railroad. And now, they’re all gone. Read more →
Bicycle bells don’t scare anybody into paying attention. You know what does? A big air horn. Read more →
Meredith Erck, the Rapid City, S.D., senior who wanted to walk with her friends at what would have been her commencement had she not been battling cancer, will walk with her friends after all. Read more →
There were less talented people than Rashad McCants who carved out a nice basketball career in the National Basketball Association, but Rashad McCants couldn’t. Read more →
The story of an attempted carjacking in Milwaukee provides us one of those ‘what would I do?’ opportunities that the news cycle occasionally provides. Read more →