Bob Collins
The must-read story of the day is NPR reporter Asma Khalid’s, an Indiana native who signed on to cover the presidential campaign. 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.
In the aftermath of the election, the time appears to be right to try to roll back perceived gains of the last few decades and now Minnesota’s Human Rights Act is in the crosshairs. Read more →
The Weather Channel came out firing today after Breitbart used a video of one of its meteorologists to claim that the earth is cooling. Read more →
He didn’t shoot anybody. He didn’t call anybody names. He united rather than divided his constituency.
As near as we can tell, the state would be better of if more people were like him.
Read more →
Good news, Minnesota, Santa likes you. A lot. Larry Jefferson, a retired U.S. Army veteran who plays Santa Claus, has returned to his Dallas home after four days at the Mall of America that landed him plenty of attention because he’s African-American. Read more →
It was one year ago Sunday that Canada’s prime minister greeted a planeload of Syrian refugees from Lebanon, welcoming them to his country. Read more →
Perhaps we just acknowledge that math isn’t really our thing.
U.S. teenagers bombed on an international test for 15 years olds, with scores declining in math compared to 60 other countries. Read more →
It’s hard to imagine a quicker path to a civil war than if a legally elected person were denied the presidency. Read more →
The editorial, signed by Tom Dennis, disputes the protesters’ assertion of a double standard in the location of the pipeline route when it was steered away from Bismarck and toward the Standing Rock territory.
Read more →
Minnesotans have no right to snicker when it comes to the difficulty of driving in snow. We saw your morning commute this morning, Minnesota.
But there’s something about cars sliding into each other that’s even more impressive when it happened this morning in Montreal, a city that knows its snow. Read more →
The Amazon Go store is being tested in Seattle. Walk in, take what you need, and pay automatically. Who needs humans?
No doubt there are plenty of reasons why this is a great idea. And yet, the future is scary.
Read more →
The Minnesota Court of Appeals today said if someone says he hopes a Minnesota state trooper will be shot, that’s not a terroristic threat.
The court ruled in the case of Gregory Allen Olson, who was in a car stopped by police in October as he and a friend were driving to Chisago City after an evening of heavy drinking. Read more →
Rachel Martin started her new gig as a co-host of NPR’s Morning Edition today, and if you read between the lines of her interview with Current, the public radio newspaper, one gets the sense that the ‘inner-Beltway mentality’ continues to crumble.
Read more →
If DFL leaders on Saturday back language that would put the party officially against a proposed copper-nickel mine near Hoyt Lakes, it could drive away longtime, pro-mining Democrats. Can the DFL win the 2018 governor’s race without them? Read more →
Facebook and Twitter increasingly are the new venue for audience feedback, so while the online audience continues to have a voice, the reality is that fewer people in the news business side of things are listening. Read more →