Mary Turck's blog

When Steven Rosenstone, chancellor of Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, spoke last week at the Compass annual meeting, he could have been mistaken for a Chamber of Commerce representative. I don't mean that as a compliment.

Rosenstone emphasized the need for "aligning academic programs with business needs" and for "a better understanding of the precise workforce needs that businesses in every sector face," but did not mention anything positive about liberal education. The closest he came was noting that not everybody needs a Ph.D. in philosophy. I won't argue with that, but there's a lot of territory that lies somewhere in between doctoral degrees and job training programs. MORE »

The Obama administration said this month that church-run hospitals, universities and charities, like other employers, must cover birth control in their health insurance plans, as an essential provision for women's health care. Despite the protests of the Catholic hierarchy, this decision is the right thing to do.MORE »

The Minnesota Compass annual meeting was packed with positive messages. Yes, we still have an achievement gap, unemployment, and various problems throughout the state — but Minnesota knows what to do to overcome these problems, and, by golly, we're moving on up! (Or, as the title of the meeting put it, "positioning ourselves for prosperity.")MORE »

Business owners along University Avenue were right: Central Corridor construction failed in big ways and the failures were denied and covered up during the construction season. That's the message from MPR's just-published investigation and from a St. Paul court ruling this week.MORE »

Lots of people* have been credited with saying, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics." Doesn't matter who said it — there are plenty of lies and damn lies to go around, and far too many end up in news articles.

Last week, the New York Times Public Editor, Arthur Brisbane, asked whether the newspaper should be a "truth vigilante." His concern was when, if ever, "news reporters should challenge 'facts' that are asserted by newsmakers they write about."MORE »

Not all the good die young. Some are tough old birds, speaking out and singing loudly all the way to the end. Peace and justice advocate Marv Davidov was one of the good ones. He died on January 14, 80 years old.MORE »

The Environmental Protection Agency just released new information on who's spewing what, complete with searchable maps. For a data nerd, they're an almost irresistible game — plug in your state and the type of industry, and it pops up on the map, complete with the amount of each type of greenhouse gas emitted in 2010. MORE »

Hero coming to town. And you can see him, up close and personal.MORE »

Many innocents get squashed by the elephantine steps taken in the never-ending war on terrorism. Some showed up outside the Wells Fargo bank at 2600 E. Franklin today, protesting the closing of hawala accounts, which means they are left with no way to send money back to hungry families in Somalia.MORE »

The horse race is getting covered 24/7 in exhaustive and ridiculous detail, with earnest anchors analyzing who’s ahead in the Iowa polls, who’s ahead among registered Republicans in Iowa, who's ahead among Iowa registered Republicans with more than three children and a car at least seven years old. On January 4, they'll move on to the post-mortem: Was it a mistake for Newt Gingrich to call Mitt Romney a liar? Would it help to run more negative ads earlier in New Hampshire or fewer negative ads later in South Carolina? If Michele Bachmann had spelled her first name with a double "l," would she have won more votes?MORE »