All politics aside, if that’s even remotely possible anymore, can we at least agree that the White House concerts over the last eight years have outclassed all previous administrations?
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MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
By Bob Collins
bcollins@mpr.org • @newscutBob 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.
There aren’t a lot of radio broadcasters left who can be called legends in their community, but Scott Miller certainly qualified as one.
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What causes people to behave like such fools whenever they step into an aluminum tube?
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Trash collection gets people riled up like few other issues in cities in Minnesota, but is it the business of the state to make the choice for them because lawmakers want consumers to have a choice? The latest city to consider eliminating the free-for-all of trash collection is St. Paul, and that’s forced a Republican Read more →
Just as sure as spring follows winter, someone is going to ignore ‘thin ice’ signs on Lake Minnetonka and insist the law of physics can be violated. Read more →

What with the news being what it is and all, it’s entirely too easy to lose faith in the utter awesomeness of humanity, but this doughnut, placed on the grave of comedian Mitch Hedberg in Roseville this week is a testament that we’ve got a little life left in us yet. Read more →

By the way, the Midwest (46%) has the largest percentage of parental deadbeats when it comes to rewarding kids for losing teeth. Read more →

Who wouldn’t root for a player who’s under four feet tall? Read more →
The owner of a Georgia-based insurance firm is requiring all of his employees to get permits to carry concealed weapons and providing each of them with a handgun. Read more →
There were loud cheers yesterday when Master Seaman Francis Legare embraced his partner, Corey Vautour, after more than eight months at sea, the CBC reports. Read more →

Usually it takes the writers until at least May to drop the anonymous innuendo of problems between Mauer and the Twins, but this year it begins on the second day of spring training.
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Anybody who drives 55 mph on Minnesota highways can confirm what the Washington Post is reporting about our driving habits: We’re not at all interested in savings a few bucks no matter what the cost of gasoline these days. Read more →
The Minnesota State Patrol released a video this afternoon that defies the axiom of ‘seeing is believing.’ Read more →
Samuel Willenberg devoted most of his 97 years to preserving the memory of more than 875,000 people who were murdered by the Nazis in the Treblinka death camp in World War II. Read more →
Megabus, the no-frills-bus from Chicago to Minneapolis, picked the wrong day to sell a ticket to a reporter.
When it blew up on the way to Milwaukee, the New York Times’ Frugal Traveler, Lucas Peterson, started tweeting, proving the old adage ‘the only thing worse than bad publicity is no publicity’ an utter lie. Read more →