Breaking News

Editorials

Minnesota’s 8 seats safe for 10 more years

Minnesotans can breathe a sigh of relief today. The U.S. Census Bureau announced its allocation of seats in the House of Representatives on Monday, based on population counted in the 2020 Census. Minnesota will retain its eight seats, getting the last available seat by edging out New York State. There had been fears that Minnesota, which has been on the bubble for decades, might lose a seat. We narrowly avoided losing a seat in 2010, and narrowly avoided losing a seat this year. State officials credit Minnesotans’ strong response to the 2020 Census for making the ...

Hate crimes Proposed law changes would highlight hidden threats

It’s an unsettling fact that the government seems to track parking tickets better than it tracks hate crimes. But a proposal to modify hate crime reporting in Minnesota to allow reports to other agencies than police and to include hate graffiti can help solve that case of misplaced priorities. A recent case of neo-Nazi graffiti via stickers on lamp posts in the Mankato area may have fit under the new legal definition of a hate crime and given authorities power to investigate and prosecute. Hate crimes at the state and federal level have from the beginning been described by a ...

Environmental plastics cleanup

Just in time for Earth Day, the Associated Press carried a story Thursday about a crew of people who returned from a three week cleanup effort in the northernmost islands of the Hawaiian archipelago. The group spent their time working at the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, 1,300 miles north of Honolulu, and came back with 47 tons — that’s 94,000 pounds — of marine plastics. The haul included lost and abandoned fishing nets, buoys, crates, bottles, fishing gear, washed up surfboards, even cigarette lighters that littered the beaches and snared the wildlife trying to ...

The Mondale model

Minnesota’s Walter “Fritz” Mondale died Monday at the age of 93. He should be remembered as a politician and statesman who brought a uniquely Minnesota flavor to the profession of politics. He was a small town from Elmore, to his lifetime of service as a state attorney general, a U.S. senator, as a transformative vice president, an honest, if unsuccessful presidential candidate, an ambassador representing his country in Japan, and finally, an elder statesman who was so respected he was the consensus candidate to take the place of Sen. Paul Wellstone, who was killed in a plane ...

Chauvin’s guilt caught on video

Ex-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted Tuesday on all three counts of murder and manslaughter in the death of George Floyd last May. Chauvin’s guilt was decided by the 12 jurors in the Hennepin County courthouse, but it was established last May, when video shot by a bystander showed Chauvin kneeling on the neck of Floyd for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, unmoving and unmoved as Floyd, his hands handcuffed behind him, struggled to breath as Chauvin and two other officers held him down on the pavement. The video captured his gasps of “I can’t breathe,” his calls ...

How did he get the guns?

Another mass shooting, this time at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis, killed eight people last week Thursday night before the gunman turned his gun on himself. Again, the shooter appears to be someone with enough red flags surrounding him to preclude him being able to get guns legally. Yet Brandon Scott Hole, 19, bought his assault style rifles legally last July and September. Hole had been questioned by the FBI last year after his mother called police and told them she was afraid her son might “commit suicide by cop.” Police confiscated a pump-action shotgun from hole at the ...