Pine Knot News - A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news

I’ll bet many of you are clearing brush this weekend. I know my family will be. If city residents pile all our brush on the side of the roads within the Cloquet city limits, the city will come by a... Full story

Gilligan and his pals relied on it to keep (relatively) sane. Fortunes have been made, legacies created, ordinary people turned into superstars. It’s been central to many movies and at least two belov... Full story

I was just in Houston, and there was an amazing story circulating. Apparently, some guy was meeting his girlfriend for a date at a burger joint. Both parked their cars at a lot across the street,...

Tucker Carlson, one of the most popular television personalities on Fox News, lost his job this week, to the cheers of liberals and to the tears of conservatives. But then Don Lemon, a liberal talk...

You don’t really own your land, right? The government just lets you use it as long as you pay your taxes, and, of course, you have to comply with zoning laws and all sorts of rules and regulations. M...

Sometimes lawyers have to argue in favor of issues they are opposed to. For example, a lawyer dedicated to First Amendment rights may defend a pornographer on constitutional grounds, although he’s o...

The Legislature is gearing up to spend our money this week, so I thought I’d review some of the ways they plan to spend it. First, they are planning to increase wages and funding for the courts. As a...

It’s difficult to explain why, exactly, there’s a disagreement over the revised project labor agreement (PLA) requirement for city-funded economic development projects. Just asking the question is...

It was August 8, 1991, before I ever called my buddy Rolf’s dad “Bud” like everyone else did. Until that date, he had been “Mr. Kragseth” to me for over 20 years. This memory came back last week. I f...

Nothing strikes fear in a banker’s heart more than the words, “run on the bank.” It conjures up images of the Great Depression, the Great Recession, and Jimmy Stewart convincing his customers to be...

Thaw, freeze. Thaw, freeze. We’ve seen that cycle quite a bit this winter, especially as we close in on a record seasonal snowfall — will we beat the record of 113.4 inches? Stick around until May... Full story

Gift certificates are very popular presents. They have been since at least 1978, when my sister Zora gave me a McDonald's certificate for Christmas. Fifty cents, which bought a burger and maybe a drin...

"Drill, baby, drill” is a fun slogan for those of us who can’t imagine a world without gasoline, and the protests over the Line 3 project cutting through Carlton County show that plenty of people wou...

It’s good to be back. Running for office was an interesting experience, but one of the most fascinating things I learned was how little most voters think about our lawmakers and how our legislature w... Full story

I owe my career to Patty Murto, and now that she's no longer around to thank, Jana is letting me do it through this column. Not that I haven't thanked her before. Over the years, I told Patty plenty o... Full story

This will be my last “Harry’s Gang” column for a while. I have decided to run for Minnesota House of Representatives in District 11A, which encompasses all of Carlton County and a small part of Pine... Full story

If I were our representative in the Legislature, here’s how I would approach some of the issues they are considering in St. Paul this session. For decades, “gaming” — which is a softer term meaning... Full story

Now that the city’s mask mandate has ended, and most schools are removing their requirements that students wear masks at school, we can all hope that the pandemic is waning and may soon be over. N... Full story

I’ve taught my kids that cops are the “good guys.” That cops can be trusted. If my kids find themselves in trouble, I’ve told them that the police will help them. Of course, most cops look a bit int... Full story

Business people often think that any government regulation is an intrusion into their business and should not be allowed. In fact, that theme has become a plank in the Republican platform, as... Full story

The Minnesota Legislature starts up again next week, and while it’s fun to make fun of lawmakers, they really do an important job in our society, and most of them take their job very seriously. T... Full story

I wonder what would happen if hundreds of strangers suddenly got stranded in Cloquet. Maybe a huge blizzard hits while we’re hosting a big hockey tournament? Or tragedy strikes on a summer Sunday a... Full story

Strangely, in my career, I’ve made a lot of friends just by suing them. It sounds odd, doesn’t it? But it’s true. Usually, it would seem, lawsuits more often end up making enemies out of frien... Full story

The whole point of a representative democracy (which is the form of government we have used in the United States for a couple of hundred years or so) is to elect one person for every certain number... Full story

Last year’s predictions were so eerily accurate that some people thought I had cheated, like maybe I had looked up the answers before making my predictions, which is, of course, impossible. My 1... Full story