Bob CollinsIt seems highly unlikely that the genie can be put back in the bottle where drivers with smartphones are concerned. Nothing seems to have gotten through to drivers that they might kill someone if they focus more on the little screen than what’s happening out the front window.
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MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Crime and Justice
Irony. Because someone drove drunk, a sheriff dies. Because of alcohol, his wife does too. Read more →
Levi Patterson, the coach of a 9-and-under baseball team in Neosho, Missouri, is going ahead with the gun raffle. He owns a gun store in town and says he came up with the idea before the shooting in Parkland, Florida.
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If the slaughter of children cannot bring a nation together, can anything? Read more →
Editorial cartoons, despite their name, are plenty serious. With a few strokes of a pen, they can destroy whatever reserve you have left. Read more →
Let’s get rid of all the rules that prevent students in school from having their smartphones with them at all times. In the current reality, they’re a lifeline. That much seems obvious after the school shooting in Florida.
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Embracing God and a perverted definition of freedom, we believe that a person should be able to buy a gun intended to kill lots of kids in a hurry, faster than the security guard with a gun that you think is the solution, can put down his doughnut. Read more →
In Minnesota, it is illegal to carry a gun while under the influence of alcohol. The literal translation of that word — carry — led to charges being dropped against a man who was stopped by a Maple Grove police officer because he wasn’t carrying the gun; it was in his car’s console. Read more →
Bob Bloomberg’s story is the story of thousands of parents of dead children across the country who didn’t think heroin was targeting their children. He wants to alert anyone else who still doesn’t think it does. Read more →
The Minnesota Court of Appeals has reinstated a defamation suit against an organization that helps victims of domestic violence, ruling that a story told by a man’s ex-wife at an awards banquet and fundraising newsletter is not protected.
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Every day we’re confronted by the exploding opioid crisis ravaging the region and a story today in the La Crosse Tribune adds to the head-shaking senselessness. Read more →
The court ruled in the case of Tracy Thompson, who had sought an order for protection in September 2015 against her ex-husband, John Schrimsher, based largely on allegations of domestic abuse several years earlier, including being kicked, choked, knocked over, and slapped, some of which occurred while she was pregnant. Schrimsher denied the allegations.
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Every day across America, the country becomes a little better place because investigative reporters shake off the bricks thrown by readers, viewers, and listeners who refuse to accept what they don’t want to believe, and hold accountable the powerful who corrupt decency on a daily basis. Read more →
Burglar Lionel Lopez, who stole a man’s cellphone and wallet from a motel room in Willmar in November 2015, has struck out again in his claim that he’s not a burglar because he was in the motel legitimately and a motel room isn’t a separate building under the state’s burglary law. Read more →
Paul TostoProviding a fingerprint to unlock a criminal suspect’s phone “elicited only physical evidence … and did not reveal the contents of his mind,” the Minnesota Supreme Court said Wednesday. Read more →