Columns

During the Independence Day season, when the United States lets loose its rowdy patriotic side, celebrating its bold disavowal of the British so many years ago, our neighbors to the north celebrate th

President Obama recently hosted 250 gay rights leaders at the White House to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village .

Sen. Al Franken is a funny guy. He is also intelligent and seems to understand the needs of his constituents. And Franken seems earnest in his desire to be a U.S. senator.

In an interview with The New York Times last week, the great and aging science-fiction author Ray Bradbury criticized the Internet in the clearest terms possible. “‘To hell with the Internet!

Millennials only got to see the Michael Jackson that was a freak.

>Excuse me. It was your bridge. We are all still adjusting to a sense of past tense.

But once the mental adjustment is made, it will be permanent. Decades from now, Twin Cities residents will recollect where they were when they heard the news and how they were impacted by the bridge collapse. I suspect everybody will be able to reckon up the last time they crossed that bridge, whether it was minutes or days.

It is really going to be really difficult to write this final column, No. 67 in three years with the Daily. This is not because it will be emotional, but because I'm genuinely out of ideas (although some might point to 2004's "Wowie, wow, wow - it's cold" as proof this happened a long time ago).

Graduation itself has a mind-numbing quality, and I mean besides the commencement ceremony. I am stunned I am graduating at all but also nervous about beginning the last chapter of my life, namely the one where I get a boring job and work until I'm too old to function.

Every day women are raped, beaten and murdered. Twenty percent to 50 percent of females worldwide are victims of domestic violence. Even when people realize the devastating statistics, they often feel the problem is not in their country.

I read with interest Audra Harpel's Monday column titled "Daily ignores conservative viewpoints." Harpel is correct to take on the meaning of the word "objective." Given her concerns, I would urge Harpel and other journalism students to read and discuss "The Truth About The Right-Leaning U.S. Media: The Story Republicans Don't Want You to See" and "The Myth of The Liberal U.S.A. Media: Conservatives Unfairly Dominate Today's Media."

With lies and distortions a daily staple of George W. Bush administration pronouncements, it's little wonder the phenomenon has become contagious. In the staid halls of the United Nations, the fibs have become so outrageous that even U.N. officials - normally models of diplomatic propriety - have felt compelled to start publicly correcting U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, Bush and other masters of deceit purporting to represent the United States.