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.
Rejecting a dissenting justice who said the nature of trash has changed, the Minnesota Supreme Court today ruled that you should have no expectation of privacy when putting your trash at the curb, saying the Minnesota Constitution does not provide greater privacy protection of trash than the U.S. Constitution. Read more →
Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard traveled from Sweden to Canada recently to trace the Viking trail from L’Anse aux Meadows, the first European settlement in North America, into the United States. Destination: Alexandria, Minn., the site of the Viking runestone, which may or may not be fake. Read more →
For a brief, shining moment last year, the nation was consumed with the scandal at the Veterans Administration, where veterans were denied medical treatment or had to wait months to get it.
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A Grand Marais farmer is not being held in contempt of court for refusing to allow state inspectors onto his property. Read more →
There’s a good chance a few people are thinking of getting into the small-town general store business today. That seems to be how one gets into the business, at least in Marine on St. Croix, where the ‘heart and soul’ of the town is for sale. Read more →
Courtesy of Vox, we learned that 123 years ago today, the Los Angeles Herald revealed scandal in the frozen tundra of Minnesota, from which a Minnesota state senator had fled.
The climate of Minnesota had made him feel like a ‘young buck’ and he wanted to ‘taste some of the joys from which he had been debarred by the restrictions of respectability.’
So he went to an orgy. Read more →
Hiding from police in a boat, hours after he and his brother planted the Boston Marathon finish line bombs, Dzkhokhar A. Tsarnaev wrote in pencil that he believed his Islamic faith permitted the killing of innocents in defense of other Muslims, a witness testified Tuesday. Read more →
Had the Mall of America and Bloomington officials let people disperse as they were in the process of doing in January when Black Lives Matter held its “illegal” protest in the Rotunda, they might not have handed a huge victory to the group. But every movement needs its martyrs. It’s how an issue stays front Read more →
As most any parent can tell you, sooner or later the words you hear coming out of your mouth, are the same ones your parents used.
That is to say: We parent the way we were parented. We may think we’re more enlightened as parents, but we’re not, and a study out today confirms that in at least one area of parenting: spanking.
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Here’s a question for teachers: Why do you bother?
It’s hard to imagine a more morale-busting business, considering the way the workforce is managed from year to year, not to mention the near daily letter to the editor in the local paper criticizing what you do.
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Daniel Jacobs was a long shot at the Detroit Tigers spring training camp this spring. For one thing, the Tigers are stacked. For another, he’s 29 years old. Oh, and he also doesn’t have a leg anymore; he lost it to a roadside bomb in Iraq. Read more →
Connor, a 16-year-old basketball fan in Seattle — a city without an NBA team — sent a letter to every NBA team asking why he should be a fan of their team. Read more →
The Bulldogs’ season is over, which means so is coach Shannon Miller’s tenure, which ends with 383 wins, 10 NCAA Division I tournament appearances and seven Frozen Fours. Read more →
What we do know is people will start walking out of the headquarters with boxes this week and it’s already starting.
About a dozen ‘upper managers’ were gone by lunch yesterday, according to one report.
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Jerry Jackson, the homeless veteran who froze to death last month in Indian Mounds Park in Saint Paul will get full military honors when he’s laid to rest at Fort Snelling National Cemetery on Thursday, courtesy of a Saint Paul funeral home.
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Bob Collins