Bob Collins
Another city fell today in Iraq. After losing Mosul yesterday, Tikrit went to the Islamists today and Baghdad may not be far behind. The U.S. vision of Iraq is lost. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Politics
The conversation surrounding the weekend revelation of perks demanded by the NFL in exchange for Minneapolis hosting Super Bowl LII entered the ‘don’t worry about it’ phase today.
The advice comes from famed foodie Andrew Zimmern, who takes on local scribes today for paying attention to the controversy. Read more →
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his primary battle against a Tea Party leader in Virginia yesterday. Proceed with caution. Read more →
For someone who lives in the White House, the danger of assuming you’re like most Americans can be particularly dangerous. Hillary Clinton proved that with the release of her new book. Read more →
The Minnesota Court of Appeals today ruled that an organization created by the Minnesota Legislature isn’t subject to data rules designed to allow access to some public records. Read more →
A few weeks ago, Cleveland-area voters approved an extension of a “sin tax” to provide handouts to upgrade three major venues — Progressive Field for the Indians, Quicken Arena for the Cavaliers, and FirstEnergy Stadium for the Browns. Now the county executive has released his plan for distributing the $2.6 million per year: It will Read more →
There were so many jaw-dropping factoids in the weekend Star Tribune article revealing what Minneapolis gave away to get the 2018 Super Bowl game that it’s hard to know where to begin. So let’s begin with the conclusion: Politicians either don’t know what’s going on in their own city, or they’re disingenuous in their denials of knowing what’s going on in their own city. Read more →
There’s a little more information about what may have been behind that faulty NPR story about a Texas couple who claimed they couldn’t find an obstetrician to take their private insurance, which they bought as a result of the Affordable Care Act.
Read more →
In Minnesota, liquor store owners killed Sunday liquor sales — again — in the recently concluded Minnesota legislative session. Now, the liquor service industry is flexing its muscle in Wisconsin where it appears to be controlling the fate on a crackdown on drunk driving and efforts to change the state’s drinking culture. Read more →
Last evening, Dayton crowned his legislative year by waiting until all the Capitol’s political reporters were in Rochester covering the GOP state convention, to put out a release after hours indicating he’d vetoed the Legislature’s bill putting the kibosh on the state lottery’s plan to allow online scratch-off gambling and lottery sales at gas pumps in the state. Read more →
That was quite a piece of audio on NPR’s Morning Edition this morning when NPR reporter David Schaper was interviewing a woman in a South Side Chicago neighborhood about a city effort to more closely track gun sales. Just after the woman insisted the block was safe, gunfire broke out. Read more →
Unquestionably, House Republicans smell blood in the water with the Veterans Affairs scandal, but last night’s House hearing on the scandal appeared to be more than just typical political theater. Three officials of the Veterans Administration — none of them named Eric Shinseki — appeared before the House Veterans Affairs Committee last evening to answer Read more →
President Obama yesterday announced that the U.S. will leave about 10,000 troops in Afghanistan by 2016, ending the war in Afghanistan.
Is it too soon to ask who won the war? Read more →
For all the appropriate chatter about intrusions into privacy, for all the legitimate scandals being derailed by school districts citing privacy and personnel law, a story today stands out: Why is it anyone’s business whether you voted? Read more →
Politicians have been mostly taking their victory lap in the days since the Minnesota Legislature ended its 2014 session, but there remains an issue that they can’t seem to outrun — Sunday liquor sales. Read more →