Bob Collins
Osakis school officials now say they’re simply suggesting girls submit a photo of their prom dresses in advance, and that it’s not a requirement. 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.
Sometime during Martin Luther King Day weekend, someone spray-painted the ‘N word’ on the home of Heather Lindsay and her husband, Lexene Charles, in Connecticut. They’re refusing to remove it.
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Alan Linda has written his last column for the Fergus Falls Daily Journal.
That’s what a column featuring the complaint about sitting next to an overweight person on an airplane will do to you. Read more →
Some people can look away from the killings and attacks on innocent people in Syria. And then there are the Canadians. Read more →
Nick Lutz’s former girlfriend is better off.
The Stetson University student got a letter from his ex, apologizing after their break-up.
So he graded it and sent it back. Read more →
Say this about science: It spawns great protest signs, as evidenced by Sunday’s rally in Boston.
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History tells us that the day will come when a rocket returning to earth and landing gently will not impress us much. Today is not that day, however. Read more →
The enemy of the American people is censorship, regardless of where the intimidation of an independent media originates. Read more →
When you invite the Internet to ‘do that thing you do,’ the Internet generally does it.
So, do that thing you do, Internet, and find people who were born on January 23, 1945.
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Stephen Jones, the school superintendent in Little Falls, Minn., pushed back and pushed back hard this week against criticism that his school system is making accommodations for Muslim students. Read more →
If you’re at all a fan of the First Amendment, there was plenty to like about today’s decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals striking down a Florida law that prohibited doctors from asking whether there are guns in the home. Read more →
While the Minnesota Legislature tackles the thorny issue of portraits of ex-governors, the scandal that is the mental health system continues relatively unabated, as just about anybody who’s tried to get access to it can attest. Read more →
Gino Salomone, of Wisconsin, has a thing for giant fiberglass turtle heads, specifically the one that covered a restaurant he used to know in Milwaukee when he was 12.
He has wondered whatever became of it?
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Wearing brown shoes with a blue suit — or even wearing a blue suit — can cost you a job, at least if you’re a Rutgers University student, which was under fire this week for turning people away from a job fair for their fashion choices. Read more →
The question of rebuking anti-Semitism should be a hanging slider that any president could hit out of the park. Read more →