As Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon said at a press conference, the shooting on Sunday of Daunte Wright, a Black man, by one of his police officers could not have come at a worse time. With the Derek Chauvin trial in full swing, tension between the police and the black community is ...
(Editor’s Note: We turn our editorial column today over to Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who writes on an issue vital to newspapers and their readers.) On May 7th of last year, the Hastings Star Gazette printed its last issue. The paper’s first issue as The Hastings Independent was published in ...
Having cameras in the courtroom has been inconceivable in Minnesota for years. Judges and attorneys alike have feared the impact the idea millions of people could be watching might have on witnesses and jurors. The Derek Chauvin trial is the first trial to allow gavel to gavel coverage. ...
Local vaccination efforts It was good to hear that the Mayo Clinic Health System in Fairmont is able to schedule appointments for patients ages 16 and up. It was also good to hear from Health and Human Services of Faribault and Martin County that a majority of elderly residents have received ...
A report from the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce confirms what our state demographers have been telling us for a long time: Minnesota’s economy needs the immigrant population to succeed. Here are some of the key findings of the Chamber’s report as outlined in its executive summary: — ...
Resolve differences with good-faith negotiations, not Wisconsin-style court fights. Last week the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down a mask mandate imposed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, following a challenge to his authority by a major Republican donor. It is another in a punishing series of ...
According to the St. Paul Police Department, the theft of catalytic converters is big business for theives. According to the department, 560 catalytic converter thefts have been reported in the city so far this year. Catalytic converters are stolen off vehicles in car lots or on the streets. ...
President Joe Biden wants to open up COVID-19 vaccinations to everyone by May. That’s a commendable goal, one that could best be reached by providing the vaccines needed to vaccinate everyone by May. Gov. Tim Walz has opened up vaccinations to anyone 16 and older. Again, that is a great ...
We recently celebrated the fact that the state recorded zero deaths from COVID-19 on Monday, March 22. It was an encouraging sign, we said, but we expected that more deaths and more cases would come in the future. On Thursday, the state reported a daily new case count of 2,140 cases, the ...
Art Scholarship A new scholarship available through the Martin County Preservation Association (MCPA) is looking to help students further their education in the visual and performing arts. This is a great idea and a good investment. We agree with the MCPA that it is not enough to preserve ...
President Joe Biden, fresh from signing his nearly $2 trillion COVID-19 relief law, is now proposing another $2 trillion package to rebuild and expand the nation’s infrastructure. The late Illinois Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen is often quoted as saying of the federal budget, “A billion ...
Gov. Tim Walz promised that “normalcy is on the horizon” during his State of the State speech on Sunday. Speaking from the classroom where he once taught social studies at Mankato West High School, Walz said “brighter days are ahead,” thanks to the increasing number of COVID ...
The murder trial of Derek Chauvin, the fired Minneapolis police officer who kept his knee on the neck of George Floyd last May for over nine minutes, until Floyd died, is different from any other trial held in Minnesota up to know. It is being live-streamed. We can all watch and listen as the ...
Rep. Jeremy Munson, R-Lake Crystal, has introduced a bill in the Minnesota Legislature that would allow some western Minnesota counties to secede from Minnesota and join up with South Dakota. Well, isn’t that special? We’re not sure what those counties would gain from joining South ...
In 2018, Congress revised the Dickey Amendment, a law passed in 1996 that prohibited the Center for Disease Control and Prevention from using federal funds intended for injury prevention from being used to advocate for gun control. In effect, any study of gun violence and the problems it causes ...
Brewery Congratulations to Joseph Riemann for putting in the work to bring a new business to Fairmont. Drawn to our community by its natural beauty and sense of safety, Riemann’s decision to relocate to Fairmont should be a source of pride for all of us. It’s also great that he and his ...
The Minnesota Supreme Court issued a ruling, based on the state’s laws, that a woman who was raped while she was drunk should not be considered mentally incapacitated, because she had consumed the alcohol willingly. Her attacker did not force her to consume alcohol against her will. Her ...
The family of a suspect in the mass shooting in a Boulder, Colorado grocery store on Tuesday told investigators they thought he suffered some kind of mental illness, that he had delusions and sometimes believed people were following or chasing him. And yet, six days before the shooting, Ahmad ...
Minnesota reached a special point in the battle against COVID-19 on Monday. For the first time since last April 13 last year, the state recorded no new deaths due to the virus. There’s still a long, long way to go before the battle against COVID-19 is over, but this is an encouraging sign of ...
The battle over who gets to vote and how they get to vote is turning nasty. In a recent invitation-only call to Republican state lawmakers, the Associated Press reports, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) urged them to resist Democratic efforts to pass H.R. 1 and expand voting rights “to illegal aliens ...