beejay

<a href="http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20021213&Category=NEWS17&ArtNo=112130 080&Ref=AR" target="_blank">Toledo Blade story on challenge to 10C monument</a>

Stephen-

Merry Solstice. You got your wish.

Puck

Hi MBR,

This last election, Albany, GA voted to have alcohol sales on Sunday. Hooters moved in and fought to get it on the ballot. So it's not a set state wide law, but open to local decisions. I don't know if it's only per drink in an eating establishment, or package stores can sell, too. But, it seems there is some wiggle room within current laws.

dangin

In Kansas and Tennessee (and other states i'm sure) the decision is county by county, and in some cases townships vary within counties.

There are totally dry counties in Kansas, there are counties that sell booze but only until 11:00 and never on Sundays, and then there are towns in counties where you can only buy 3.2 percent beer. Also, grocery stores only sell 3.2 percent beer state wide in Kansas. You have to go to a liquor store to get real beer. One county, in the Kansas City, Kansas area has passed a beer sales on Sunday law. It still may get challenged.

Stephen Maturin

Thanks and right back atcha, beejay. I received a heads-up last month that this was coming, but the timing of the filing came as a pleasant surprise.

Particularly encouraging is the fact that the case is assigned to Judge Jim Carr, who may very well be the smartest and most fair-minded person in the entire federal judiciary.

MrDarwin

This is sheer speculation on my part (and I fully acknowledge that the original intent may have been religious, along with blue laws in general) but is it possible that prohibiting liquor sales on Sunday is supposed to encourage people to "dry out", since Saturday is such a big drinking night (often going on into the wee hours of the morning)?

Puck

Doesn't work for me. So, I've worked all evening Saturday, and it's now Sunday and I'd like to sit outside on the proch and read and sip a drink? Am I not an adult American who can choose for herself when she wants a drink? I should have that little pleasure taken away because some folks overinduldge on Saturday night? As far as I can see, there is no valid reason to bar liquor sales on Sunday. If it's a legal product, how can you regulate when it's legal and when it's not without stepping on other people's rights?

It all falls back to religous reasons. Same with laws that forbid stores near chruches selling alcohol. The little store down the road from here can't sell beer, because there's a church across the street, but the store a mile down the road can, so they make more from the local folks than the store nearby. Again, religon controlling a private business. Seems so...anti-American.

Don't get me wrong, these local idiots don't need anything to make them more stoopid, or, dangerous, but we can't legislate who gets rights and who doesn't. They're forever smacking into trees and each other and running off into the ditches and finding it terribly funny. Arhggg, don't let me go there.

RobertE

Forbidding Sunday sales of alcohol and car sales are not the only vestiges of religiously inspired Blue Laws. Some states don't allow hunting on Sundays. South Carolina and Ohio are two that I know of. The reason I hear most often by contemporary supporters of such inanity is "to give the animals a rest". It's my understanding though that the original intent was to get folks into church where they belonged. I don't think anyone argues that point much anymore. I believe hunting for certain animals in a couple of Canadian provinces is also forbidden.

I remember when Sunday alcohol sales were approved here in Missouri. Your favorite US Attorney General and mine was governor at the time. He fought tooth and nail against the ballot initiative. It passed pretty handily from what I remember. I also seem to recall that Ashcrap argued mostly from a religious/moral perspective and not from what would have been a more rational, public safety angle. He used the same psuedo-religious argument to battle the state lottery and casino gambling. He's lost all three times.

Either we Missourians are a besotted, sinful lot, or we just don't take the holier than thou tone very seriously.

lpetrich

I also have wondered whatever happened to Sabbatarianism. A century ago, there were some who thought it very wicked to play card games on Sundays; whatever has happened to that?

beekay

I worked a late shift at my job and would leave work as late as 2 a.m. sometimes. One Saturday night (Sun. morning) I wanted to go home and relax with a couple glasses of wine to kind of celebrate the end of a rough week. I stopped by a 24-hr grocery store to pick up a bottle but was told that since it was after 2 a.m. on a Sun morning, I couldn't buy any. Boy o boy was I pissed!! That was the first time I had heard of such a goofy law (I had recently moved to western NC after having lived in New Orleans before.)