Am I Blue? Only on Sundays.

• Author: Rundles, Jeff
• Position: Rundles Wrap-up

ONE OF THE MORE NEGATIVE ASPECTS OF LIVING A LONG time is you realize there's not much that's really new.

Lately, there has been a lot of hub-bub in the Colorado General Assembly over a piece of legislation that would allow for Sunday liquor sales in liquor stores. I just have to laugh. This is at least the fourth time the state house has addressed the issue of Sunday liquor sales in my 30-plus years in Colorado, and it comes as no surprise that our lawmakers are about as useless today as they were 30 years ago.

It has always struck me as odd that we have so-called Blue Laws--laws on the books that restrict certain activities on Sundays. They are, of course, holdovers from Puritanical New England, before the Revolutionary War, a time when engaging in certain behavior on Sundays--like drinking alcohol--could land you a couple of days in the stocks where friends and neighbors would be encouraged to throw rotten fruit and vegetables at you.

In Colorado, holdover Blue Laws pertaining to the Christian Sabbath prevent liquor sales at liquor stores as well as sales of automobiles. These restrictions are, to say the least, archaic and outdated, so naturally the obvious place to argue their relative merits is the state legislature.

The legislative session isn't over (and we won't be safe until it is), so I suppose anything could happen.

Yet, I doubt that our representatives and senators, controlled either by Democrats or Republicans, have the courage to repeal the Blue Laws. The reason--and it was the same reason the other three times the bill has been proposed--is that liquor-store owners don't want to be open on Sunday, and liquor-store owners have a powerful lobby.

In other words, money talks.

And, gosh, so have these gabby store owners. Liquor-store owners have been down to the legislature to testify against the bill with all sorts of outrageous tales.

One told elected officials that Sunday sales would make liquor more readily available to people who should not have it. Please.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Another said that Sunday sales would unleash drunken drivers and underage drinking. Shut up.

The last thing we need is to have liquor-store owners preach to us about morals.

And I about fell out of my chair when I heard that the owner of one of the state's largest liquor stores boldly...