After enjoying a couple hamburgers Friday at the annual Catholic Charities cookout in downtown St. Paul, Deenard Watts was excited to learn the luncheon had been staffed and organized by more than a dozen judges from the Minnesota Supreme Court and Minnesota Court of Appeals.

Would Watts, who has lived at Catholic Charities’ downtown Dorothy Day Place since September, like to meet a true-to-life judge? Indeed he would, he said enthusiastically, before being introduced to Natalie Hudson, chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, who had just wrapped a shift serving burgers.

“I’m a church-going man,” explained Watts, 67, recounting some of his ups and downs and an apartment lease he soon planned to sign, as Hudson nodded in encouragement. “God brought me here for a reason. I’m trying to set up a Bible study.”

The outdoor event — organized by judges for more than two decades — drew just under 600 guests, many of them homeless patrons of Higher Ground, the Dorothy Day Residence and the St. Paul Opportunity Center, which form an integrated campus for the city’s most vulnerable just off West Seventh Street.

The cookout also drew a record number of volunteers, including upwards of 60 judges and staffers, and a new name. Volunteers wore orange, tie-dye-style shirts recognizing the “Judge Jim Randall Annual Picnic at Dorothy Day Place,” named after the former appellate judge who founded the luncheon with a handful of likeminded friends 22 years ago.

Randall died in August, but sunny skies and temperate climes for the cookout added to an upbeat atmosphere, punctuated by live music from the Rhythm Pups, who have played the annual gathering since its founding.

“One of the comments I heard was this (weather) is Judge Randall smiling down on us,” said Court of Appeals Judge Diane Bratvold, who became the judicial system’s lead cookout organizer after inheriting the task from Judge Jill Halbrooks, its longtime chair.

“This was one of his favorite things to do, and it was one of the most important things he thought for the courts to do. … This gets us out there,” Bratvold added. “We’re missing Judge Randall this year, and it’s obviously sweet and sad in many ways.”

Among the other attendees were Supreme Court Justices Theodora Karin Gaïtas, Gordon Moore III and Karl Procaccini, as well as Judge Jennifer Frisch, chief judge of the Minnesota Court of Appeals, and at least nine other appellate judges, as well as their law clerks, court administrators, family and staff.

“It’s became one of the highlights of the year for both courts,” said Hudson, who has been volunteering at the annual Memorial Day cookout for about a decade.

“It really is about serving our community, giving back to the community, but it’s also it’s a way of humanizing the courts,” she added. “For so many people, their only interaction with the judges, in particular, is often a negative one. This is an opportunity to break bread with our community … and also show we’re human beings.”

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DALLAS — Here in Texas, our Republican leaders treat the Constitution as an absolute when they like what it has to say. When they don’t, well, then it’s an inconvenience to be dealt with.

This attitude makes for a confusing mess in the state Legislature.

Take the debate about whether to require public schools to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms. State lawmakers are considering Senate Bill 10, which would require Texas classrooms to display a 16-inch-by-20-inch poster or framed copy of the religious code in large type.

The first two sections of the First Amendment prohibit the government from making laws establishing religion or preventing its free exercise. The separation of church and state is a pillar of our democracy.

The Supreme Court already weighed in on the question of whether to display the Ten Commandments in public schools. In 1980, it struck down a Kentucky law that would have required Ten Commandments posters in classrooms. The author of Senate Bill 10, Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, wants that to change. He predicted legal challenges to the bill and expressed hope that the “bad law” of the past would be overturned by the current U.S. Supreme Court, this newspaper reported.

King said the new requirement is intended to provide “moral clarity” and promote national heritage.

We’ve said before that students need robust moral instruction, but posting the Ten Commandments to the wall is a flimsy attempt at that. And why the sole interest in the Ten Commandments and not the moral codes of minority faiths?

While the First Amendment is an annoyance in the state Capitol, the Second Amendment is sacrosanct. For years, Republican lawmakers have moved to prevent even modest actions that might make guns harder to obtain.

GOP legislators are trying to ban publicly owned venues like Fair Park from prohibiting guns, even when the events are privately operated. Years ago, they passed a law so that Texans can now carry handguns without a license or training. It’s called permitless carry. Wait, it’s constitutional carry, according to the Texas Republicans.

As we’ve seen across the country, absolutism is a bad look whether it’s coming from the right or the left. In 2023, a Democratic state representative in Pennsylvania called on the University of Pittsburgh to cancel events featuring conservative speakers, using what appeared to be a veiled threat to withhold funding, according to news reports.

But when the speech aligns with their causes, progressive politicians become free-speech absolutists. Some Democrats chastised universities for cracking down on unruly pro-Palestinian protests. This despite the fact that public institutions can impose reasonable limits on the time, place and manner of expression on campus.

Many of our elected leaders are so bogged down by their mission to appease a narrow political base that their first duty is forgotten altogether: Governing in the best interests of their constituents, and not just the ones from their party.

— The Dallas Morning News

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Today is Saturday, May 24, the 144th day of 2025. There are 221 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On May 24,1883, New York’s Brooklyn Bridge, at the time the world’s longest suspension bridge, opened to traffic.

Also on this date:

In 1844, Samuel F.B. Morse transmitted the message “What hath God wrought” from Washington to Baltimore as he formally opened America’s first telegraph line.

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In 1935, the first Major League Baseball game to be played at night took place at Cincinnati’s Crosley Field as the Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 2-1.

In 1937, in a pair of rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Social Security Act of 1935.

In 1941, during World War II, the German battleship Bismarck sank the British battle cruiser HMS Hood in the North Atlantic, killing all but three of the 1,418 men on board. (The Bismarck would be sunk by British battleships three days later.)

In 1962, astronaut Scott Carpenter became the second American to orbit the Earth as he flew aboard the Aurora 7 spacecraft.

In 1974, American jazz composer and bandleader Duke Ellington, 75, died in New York.

In 1994, four Islamic extremists convicted of bombing New York’s World Trade Center in 1993 were each sentenced to 240 years in prison.

In 2022, an 18-year-old gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 children and two teachers. The gunman, Salvador Ramos, a former student at the school, was also killed. It was the deadliest shooting at a U.S. elementary school since the 2012 attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

Today’s Birthdays:

Comedian Tommy Chong is 87.
Musician Bob Dylan is 84.
Actor Gary Burghoff (M*A*S*H) is 82.
Singer Patti LaBelle is 81.
Actor Priscilla Presley is 80.
Actor Jim Broadbent is 76.
Cinematographer Roger Deakins is 76.
Actor Alfred Molina is 72.
Musician Rosanne Cash is 70.
Actor Kristin Scott Thomas is 65.
Author Michael Chabon is 62.
Basketball Hall of Famer Joe Dumars is 62.
Actor John C. Reilly is 60.
Basketball Hall of Famer Tracy McGrady is 46.
Dancer-choreographer Mark Ballas is 39.
Country singer Billy Gilman is 37.
Rapper G-Eazy is 36.
Actor Brianne Howey is 36.
Actor Daisy Edgar-Jones is 27.

In a matchup between two of the American League’s top pitching staffs, it’s no surprise that runs were hard to come by on Friday night.

After each scoring early, the two pitching staffs put up zeros throughout the middle and late innings of the game before Ty France hit a walk-off home run inning to send the Twins to a 3-1 win over the Kansas City Royals on Friday night at Target Field.

France unleashed on a first-pitch slider from Lucas Erceg, sending the ball deep into the night. It was France’s second-walk off hit as a Twin this season and first career walk-off home run.

The Twins’ only run prior to that point came in the second inning when Carlos Correa hammered a Noah Cameron pitch to center field. The ball, which traveled 429 feet, left the bat at 107.2 miles per hour and tied the game up at the time. It was Correa’s first at-bat since returning from the seven-day concussion injured list after colliding with teammate Byron Buxton last Thursday in Baltimore.

Correa said he experienced dizziness, headaches and brain fog in the days after suffering the concussion, but he looked good in his return, sending another fly ball deep to right field in his second at-bat of the night. He also collected an infield single in the ninth inning and scored on France’s home run.

While the Twins didn’t have that many opportunities to begin with in the game — they finished the day with just six hits — the Royals had a chance in almost every inning. And yet, Twins pitchers made sure those chances didn’t amount to anything.

Though Pablo López did not throw a 1-2-3 inning in his outing, he was able to pitch around traffic for the most part, after giving up a run in the first inning. López allowed seven hits in his outing, but each time he did, he maneuvered himself out of it. He departed with two outs in the sixth inning in favor of Brock Stewart, who got Kyle Isbel to pop up for the final out of the inning.

In the seventh, Louie Varland allowed a four-pitch walk to begin his outing but a key double play helped him out of the situation. And an inning later, after Maikel Garcia reached on a leadoff single, Griffin Jax picked him off before recording the next two outs of the inning. With a scoreless ninth, Cole Sands picked up the win for the Twins.

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