Bob Collins
If two photos could capture the intensity of the heroin epidemic in America at the moment, these are the ones. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Crime and Justice
If you’re reading news tweets from the hearing for the killer of Jacob Wetterling this afternoon, you might get the sense that we’ve turned another corner in journalism with the removal of another filter. Read more →
Like many Minnesotans, I did something last night I rarely do. I left the porch light on.
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In Weare, New Hampshire (pop. 8,785), townspeople have posted plastic flamingos on their lawns as a symbol of their support and hope for a 12-year-old girl fighting leukemia.
The flamingos are being sold for $10 each to raise money for Abby Van Dyke’s expenses. Thirteen-hundred birds have been sold so far. Read more →
One of every seven Minnesota drivers has a DWI. A new state reports reveals the demographics of Minnesota DWIs and shows big differences in county conviction rates. Read more →
In 2014, Mary Cocchiarella gave Donald Driggs $2,400 for the first-month’s rent and security deposit for an apartment in Spring Lake Park. But he told her he still had some work to do on the apartment and she wouldn’t be able to move in for another day. Another day — and many days after that — came and went and still she couldn’t move in.
Is she covered by a Minnesota law offering protections for ‘residential tenants’? Read more →
A third of the untested rape kits in Minnesota remain untested because the victim didn’t want to pursue a case. After reading the story of a New Hampshire rape victim, can we blame them? Read more →
Anita Krajnc, 49, could be in jail soon. She’s in day two of her trial in Ontario on criminal charges.
She gave water to some pigs heading for the slaughterhouse. Read more →
People were unhappy with the picture that was used to show the driveway of the individual, whose case was at the heart of the case which tested a state law regulating these sorts of things.
So I snapped a couple of pictures this afternoon.
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The Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled that a search warrant that allows police to test the blood alcohol content of a suspected drunken driver can also target the use of drugs, even if there’s no probable cause to suspect drug use. Read more →
A kid can’t even take a rabbit to a county fair anymore, at least not in Steele County. Read more →
A Minnesota law requiring collector cars to be “screened” from public view has survived a challenge from a Cleveland Avenue, St. Paul man who buried two of them under tarps.
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For all the love Americans rightly show the Constitution, the right to an attorney is a poor step child. Read more →
Give the people of Morristown, New Jersey some credit for at least acknowledging out loud — sort of — that a person’s car is their castle and they have a god-given right to do whatever they want therein.
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He acknowledges in his op-ed in the Star Tribune today that his bar for ‘nice’ is pretty low; he came to accept the rudeness of prison as normal… almost nice.
Still, he writes today, Minnesota is pretty nice for a person trying for a second chance. Read more →