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.
Today’s Supreme Court decision that appears to open the floodgates of campaign contributions is rooted in this question: What is corruption? The word appears 124 times in today’s opinon.
In its ruling today, the Court said the limits are arbitrary because they set a point at which a campaign contribution is corruption. Read more →
There is a code among firefighters that few of us can fully comprehend, even though we so admire its existence. Read more →
It was hard to tell the other night when Stephen Colbert was in character and when he was just being the real Stephen Colbert when he declared ‘I’m not a racist.’
He was reacting to the protests that popped up after his writers tweeted a joke he made on the show without any of the context that was evident in his Comedy Channel show’s episode. That prompted Twitter to take to the ramparts to urge that his show be canceled. Read more →
Michael Lewis, the author who told ’60 Minutes’ why the stock market is rigged, comes face-to-face with an exchange president he says is in charge of the rigging. Wall Street traders stopped to watch the fight. Read more →
Geek Squad founder Robert Stephens couldn’t say much about the company that made him rich when he sold his company to Best Buy. His contract with the company, which he left in 2012, prevented him from doing so. Now the handcuffs are off and he’s talking, the Pioneer Press’ Julio Ojeda-Zapata writes today. Read more →
The baseball fans in Tampa — all dozen or so of them — showed us how to settle our differences yesterday when a bat went flying into the stands and several gentlemen claimed ownership. Read more →
The fishing opener is a little more than a month away and — perhaps you’ve heard — winter doesn’t seem to want to let go of its warm embrace. Read more →
At the heart of the kerfuffle that broke out this week between promoters of a hip-hop current and the artists is our inability to talk honestly and productively about race in the Twin Cities. Read more →
And now this antidote for last week’s story about college sports players who skated through high school thanks to educators who were more than willing to pass illiterate students and some parents who didn’t seem to care. Read more →
In a perfect world on April Fool’s Day, the Boston Red Sox would’ve played a great joke on teammate Johnny Gomes, who bought all of his teammates the ridiculous sport coats I wrote about last week to wear at their White House meeting with President Obama today. They were being honored for last year’s World Series victory.
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There appears to be no middle ground in the final episode of How I Met Your Mother: You either loved the ending or hated it, apparently. Read more →
Coincidence? Less than a month since NPR and Pro Publica blew the whistle on the foot-dragging ways of the military to identify the remains of unknown soldiers, the Pentagon is going to bring the process into the 21st century. Read more →
A case in Delaware is raising an old philosophical debate: Is prison for punishing someone or getting them treatment?
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The Star Tribune, predictably, has come out with solid support for giving the National Football League whatever it wants in exchange for letting Minneapolis host a Super Bowl in 2018 or 2019.
In its editorial today, the Strib stretches credulity in dispelling the notion that a Super Bowl is a chit in exchange for taxpayers ponying up a massive amount of money for the new home for the Vikings, in which the Super Bowl would be played. Read more →
A plan to highlight hip-hop artists in the Twin Cities has ran afoul of hip-hop artists.
MPR’s The Current and Twin Cities Public Television had planned the State of Hip Hop event at the Fitzgerald Theater for May, but a community meeting to plan the event highlighted deep divisions between artists and the media. Read more →
Bob Collins