Senate Bill 82, allowing the sale of liquor, wine, and full-strength beer on Sundays, is headed to the Governor’s desk for approval. But don’t get all excited quite yet. Ritter is reportedly sympathetic to the opposition’s arguments – that is, the whining of grocery and convenience stores who say the law will hurt sales of their crap 3.2 beer.

Let’s hope the Gov’s more libertarian sensibilities prevail. Dumping these anachronistic blue laws – remnants of Prohibition-era Puritanism – is an excellent idea whose time has come. Not that it’s so difficult to stock up on the good stuff Saturday for your barbeque on Sunday, but there’s a principle at stake here.

While it’s easy to sympathize with grocery and convenience store owners who face smaller profit margins due to lost sales, they’ve enjoyed their government-granted monopoly long enough. If Senate Bill 82 also relegates that 3.2 swill – really, beer-flavored water suitable only for breakfast and watering plants – to obscurity, well, so much the better.