There’s a good mystery in your local bookstore. Someone is stealing books by beatnik authors. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news

It was the first day of kindergarten in the Bronx this week for Austin Tuozzolo. His father would’ve accompanied him to the bus stop. But he’s dead. Read more →
Something’s got to give on Saturday when the St. Scholastica football team takes on Greenville of Illinois, which lost last weekend 76-to-3. St. Scholastica lost to St. John’s University 98-doughnut. Read more →

It’s not often you see campaigning for changes to the law in an obituary, but the murder-suicide in Orono this week, as heartbreaking a story as there is, provides the rarity in today’s Star Tribune. Read more →

We’re suspicious of the growing online claims that the nation’s airlines are gouging people trying to escape Hurricane Irma.
So far, the only evidence of it happening are occasional tweets claiming the airlines are charging thousands of dollars for seats out of the region. Read more →
If you want to get a sense of the kind of expertise behind the scenes at an airline, take a look at Delta Airlines, which today did what some other airlines didn’t want to do: fly into, then out of, San Juan, Puerto Rico, which is about to get hammered by Hurricane Irma. Read more →
Rocori High School in Cold Spring, Minn., is banning the display of flags on vehicles of kids who drive to school starting on Monday. Read more →
Can you steal a car if it never moves? Yes, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled today, reversing two lower courts which had said Somsalao Thonesavanh, of Nobles County, couldn’t be convicted of car theft because he didn’t take the car anywhere. Read more →

You’re going to want to sit down for this. Read more →
The Athletic, a $30-a-year service that has operated in six cities in the United States — New York, Cleveland, San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis and Philadelphia — has now added a seventh: the Twin Cities. It’s also adding other NHL cities, scooping up the top hockey writers in several hockey-crazed cities, following a pattern in which it has been gobbling up local papers’ best analysts.
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In times of national tragedy, it must be difficult for the politics-obsessed among us to resist a ‘serves ’em right’ smugness. Garrison Keillor couldn’t. Read more →

There may be no other job on the planet that seems as risky as the one Nick Underwood does.
He’s a hurricane hunter and today he was on the crew that flew a plane — intentionally — into Hurricane Irma, providing this video this afternoon on Facebook.
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Ken Burns’ ‘The War’ series provided a sentimental, if painful, look at World War II. There’s no way his latest epic can. It’s still too raw. America is still coming to grips with the discovery that our leaders are often con men. And sometimes, 50,000 young people die because of it. Read more →
It’s a pretty safe bet that the members of the Silver Chain Social Club never imagined the details of their lives would be enshrined forever in history by the Minnesota Historical Society.
The Silver Chain Social Club was an early-’70s swingers’ club in Minnesota. Read more →
The Minnesota Court of Appeals today threw out the conviction of a Brooklyn Park man, arrested on drug charges, because police violated his right to privacy when using a drug-sniffing dog to sniff outside his apartment door.
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