Bob Collins
The name of the game in the Minnesota State High School League basketball tournament is winning, so is it a problem if a team exploits the rules and wins in a way that doesn’t seem quite right? 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.
America wasn’t familiar with losing astronauts when Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee burned to death in their Apollo capsule on the launch pad during a 1967 test of their Saturn 1B rocket. We’d never lost an astronaut before Read more →
The latest battleground for gay rights? St. Patrick’s Day parades, specifically the one in Boston, home to one of the countries largest Irish enclaves.
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There’s a pretty fair chance the Fond du Lac Ojibwe School boys basketball team — known as the Ogichidaag — won’t get much attention from the big city media at this week’s Minnesota State High School League basketball tournament — they’re just a Class A team — but the squad appears to have all the qualities of a Cinderella team. Read more →
The Lakeville Area School District is going to reconsider its opt-out policy on student surveys after some parents this week objected to a recent survey which included personal questions about family members. Read more →
The White House Press Corps is pushing back — again — at administration efforts to avoid mainstream media and taking its case “directly to the people.” CBS News’ Bill Plante tells a CNN media program, “this administration has the tools to reach people on their own. They don’t need us as much. And to the Read more →
Our man in Hendricks, Steve Hemmingsen, writes today to pass along the wintertime work of Don Buller, who is spending his time working on his coffin. Read more →
Superior Court Judge Sohail Mohammed said all patients enjoy strong privacy protections that give them the sole authority to decide who is at their bedside. Read more →
When the thieves started extracting data, the company saw the alarms go off, BusinessWeek reports. And a security team in Minneapolis was alerted.
So what happened? Nothing.
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Three of the governor’s most powerful cabinet members lobby against a medical marijuana bill while the governor insists he’s like to see a compromise on the question. Read more →
Occasionally, sanity triumphs, and someone can thank a judge for that. Read more →
In 1950, an airliner heading for Minneapolis disappeared over Lake Michigan and has never been found. Read more →
A philosophical debate that has been waged in fits and starts since people started buying, then tearing down, older homes in Edina and Minneapolis, and has flared again with last week’s announcement that Minneapolis would put a moratorium on teardowns in several neighborhoods. Read more →
Former MSNNBC commentator Joseph Williams had the good life going right up until the moment when he discussed race in the Obama-Romney campaign and was booted out of his job two weeks later. Then the Internet found a five-month plea deal for domestic assault. He was toast in the news business.
So he took a job at a sporting goods store. Read more →
The world is full of people who don’t want to be involved, but the Twin Cities has two news stories today about people who just get a little tired of the jerks who try to rob people. Read more →