Bob CollinsL.L. Bean heiress Linda Bean donated $60,000 to a PAC supporting Donald Trump, an amount over the legal limit, according to the Federal Election Commission. But even if it wasn’t, there’s a fair chance that someone would be urging a boycott of the Maine retailer anyway.
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.
(Video link) Lajos Delej was a composer and pianist of great promise, the Boston Globe says. He was also in love. So when the Nazis invaded Hungary, Pauline Herzek was sent to Auschwitz (where her father and stepmother were murdered) and Delej, who had entered the ghetto to try to rescue her, was never seen Read more →
At least for most us suburbanites, the steady march of chain-store America has overwhelmed whatever defense small business could mount. Businesswise, at least, if you’ve seen one town, you’ve seen them all.
Read more →
The power of self esteem is regularly and increasingly mocked in U.S. culture, perhaps one of the reasons the arts has an increasingly difficult time gaining a bigger foothold in the education system. Maybe Kenya knows something we should. Read more →
MPR’s Tom Weber has been in Ely, doing some legwork for an upcoming broadcast and found someone else doing some legwork. She’s Betty Kunstel, a member of Ely Memorial High School’s cheerleader squad. She’s also the only member of Ely Memorial High School’s cheerleader squad.
Given the current state of affairs, we’ll take a heartwarming story anywhere we can find it, and Steve Hartman’s latest effort certainly fits the bill.
Read more →
This video suggests to us that we’ve entered another era when people are running across a major American airport in search of safety.
Read more →
The Salvation Army has reversed a decades-old policy and will no longer bar people who’ve been drinking from its shelter in La Crosse, the La Crosse Tribune reports. Read more →
Former baseball star Curt Schilling is probably going to be ushered into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown when the results of voting by baseball writers is revealed on Jan. 18.
But Schilling, a conservative’s conservative, is outraged that some writers are leaving him off their ballot and he thinks it’s because of his support for Donald Trump. Read more →
Here’s a pro tip from upstate New York: If you’re arrested for DUI and you want to keep it on the down low, don’t buy up all the newspapers in the area carrying your mugshot. Read more →
A University of Minnesota football player has provided new insight into what the team was thinking when it called a boycott of football activities to protest the suspension of 10 players who were accused of sexually assaulting a woman after a September party.
Read more →
Student loan relief, Social Security taxes, religion in school, transgender bathroom laws, and CEO pay are among the topics in the first wave of bills filed in the Minnesota House. Read more →
I’m very late getting to this dissection of a StoryCorps segment last month but since I relayed it on NewsCut I should get complaints into the record, although it did not generate controversy on this blog.
Read more →
Little League baseball is adopting new rules to speed up the pace of play, which leads us to ask this question: What’s the hurry? Read more →
It’s good news and bad news for law enforcement when it snows. Good: It makes it easier to track a perpetrator. Bad: It makes it hard to chase said perp. A Beltrami County deputy demonstrates.
Read more →