Author Archives: Kevin Featherly

Kevin Featherly, who joined BridgeTower Media in mid-2016, is a journalist and former freelance writer who has covered politics, law, business, technology and popular culture for publications and websites in the Twin Cities and nationally since the mid-1990s.

Capitol Retort: Impeachment vote, snuffing e-cigs, that’s bananas

Kevin Featherly December 18, 2019

Gallery owner Emmanuel Perrotin poses Dec. 4 next to Italian artist Maurizio Cattlelan's “Comedian” at the Art Basel exhibition in Miami Beach, Florida. The work sold for $120,000. (AP file photo)

Our review of issues in state and national news, with a rotating cast of political people in the know.

Rulings hang question mark on anti-stalking law

Kevin Featherly December 18, 2019

Statute’s mens rea underpinnings possibly unconstitutional.

Bar Buzz: Limmer schedules two pre-session gun hearings

Kevin Featherly December 17, 2019

Sen. Warren Limmer, R-Maple Grove (File photo: Kevin Featherly)

Gun safety will finally get heard in a Republican Senate committee on Dec. 19. But it won’t be exactly what Democrats have been clamoring for.

Use of force working group pivots to public

Kevin Featherly December 13, 2019

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, left, stands with Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington during a Dec. 5 press conference. The officials updated the media on the progress of their Working Group on Police-Involved Deadly Force Encounters, which they co-chair. (Staff photo: Kevin Featherly)

Group led by Ellison, Harrington, to issue report in February.

A judicial history buff’s paradise

Kevin Featherly December 12, 2019

Hennepin County District Court Chief Judge Ivy Bernhardson stands near a display in the court history museum that she has been trying to get off the ground for three years. The judge is a major history buff. (Staff photo: Kevin Featherly)

Hennepin County museum outlines court’s evolution, key trials.

Capitol Retort: Good cop/bad cop, family squabble, un-tax or spend

Kevin Featherly December 12, 2019

Attorney General William Barr, center, arrives Nov. 21 at a roundtable with members of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies at the Cleveland Police Department’s Third District station. Following Barr is Justin Herdman, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio. (AP photo)

Our review of issues in state and national news, with a rotating cast of political people in the know.

Suit: Juul deceived state’s teens

Kevin Featherly December 10, 2019

Attorney General Keith Ellison speaks to reporters after announcing a lawsuit his office filed Wednesday against San Francisco e-cigarette company Juul Labs Inc. The state’s 82-page complaint accuses Juul of breaking state consumer-protection laws, breaching its duty of reasonable care and creating a public nuisance. Gov. Tim Walz and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan also are pictured. (Staff photo: Kevin Featherly)

AG’s office enlists big-league private lawyers to assist.

Two sex convictions at one hearing don’t make a ‘prior’

Kevin Featherly December 9, 2019

Minnesota Judicial Center. (File photo: Bill Klotz)

Court of Appeals lifts offender’s lifetime conditional release.

Ruling: Code doesn’t bar debtor from bad-faith act

Kevin Featherly December 6, 2019

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals court is based in the massive Thomas F. Eagleton United States Courthouse in St. Louis, pictured, although it occasionally holds hearings in the Warren E. Burger Federal Building in downtown St. Paul or at law schools in the Twin Cities. (File photo: Bloomberg News)

The U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the U.S. bankruptcy code does not bar a debtor—in this case, an attorney—from acting in bad faith.

Session 2020: Bonding, insulin, DHS

Kevin Featherly December 5, 2019

An emphatic House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt, R-Crown, center, makes a point during a Minnesota Government Relations Council legislative panel Monday. House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler, DFL-Golden Valley, and Senate Assistant Minority Leader Susan Kent, DFL-Woodbury, listen in. Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka was an unexplained no-show. (Staff photo: Kevin Featherly)

Capitol panel also mulls pot, mental health and ‘severe or pervasive.’