Bob Collins
The protests surrounding the police killings of black men have provided fertile ground for a discussion of First Amendment issues and today Providence, Rhode Island is the latest example. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Archives for December 2014
A Canadian low-cost airline has struck it big on the InterTubes with its lengthy commercial/doc on providing a Christmas for a village in the Dominican Republic. Read more →
A guy in Cottage Grove can’t receive the applause he fully deserves because he doesn’t want his last name used, but he’s a neighbor looking out for other neighbors. Read more →
Every now and again, Jon Stewart bites his lip and doesn’t try to be funny. Last night was one of those nights. Read more →
Lauren Hill, the basketball player who won hearts in the face of a pending death because of cancer, has entered hospice care, ESPN reports. Read more →
Even if you don’t stop to read the obituary page every day, it’s hardly a secret that people die from horrible diseases, that they’re taken too soon, and that life is inherently unfair.
For the most part we might stop to read a few lines, then move along because life goes on; that’s the nature of life. Read more →
Last July, Major League Baseball used its biggest in-season stage — the All-Star Game in Minneapolis — to try to convince people that its days of creating a hostile environment for the gay athlete — or gays at all — are over. Read more →
Last time we checked, authorities who were in charge of investigating the killing of Cold Spring police officer Tom Decker had still not apologized to Ryan Larson, the man they identified as an initial suspect with no evidence to suggest he did. Read more →
The Twins made it official this morning when they announced that former star Torii Hunter has been signed for a one-year contract.
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You’re a member of the Greatest Generation and you arrive at the airport in Milwaukee after a long day at the World War II museum in Washington when you find this, as several Wisconsin vets did this week. Read more →
Audrey Kletscher Helbling, who writes the Minnesota Prairie Roots blog, has a real knack for finding the obvious characterizations of our sensibilities that most of us don’t see. Read more →
Explorers Dave and Amy Freeman have made it to Washington in their effort to canoe to the nation’s capital by canoe to lobby against copper mining around the Boundary Waters.
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It’s unlikely that Minnesotans who are hyperventilating over a proposed policy on transgender athletes in Minnesota schools will be swayed by facts, but the first woman to play on a boy’s sports team in the state is taking a shot at it anyway. Read more →
Walaker didn’t seem to be a phony, and he made North Dakota make a lot of sense to an out-of-towner. Read more →
Another first for gay men in sports today when Dale Scott became the first active baseball umpire to come out as gay. Read more →