Word: blues
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Read "Will the Recession Doom the Last Sunday Blue Laws...
...alcohol-governing rules that remain on the books, some of the most extreme are known as "blue laws," which outlaw certain "secular" activities on Sunday (like enjoying a pint of ale). The term, according to some historians, comes from the color of the paper used to print the first decrees, in New Haven, Conn. Others believe it refers to blue's use as an 18th century slang term for "rigidly moral." If you were a settler in the 1700s, Sunday was a day to rest and honor the Sabbath, nothing less and (definitely) nothing more. It wasn't just alcoholic...
While most blue laws faded into obscurity after the Revolutionary War, the temperance movement of the 1930s renewed interest in banning the Devil's Brew and reclaiming Sunday as a holy day, especially in the Bible Belt. In 1961, the Supreme Court ruled that states had the right to impose blue laws, but only if lawmakers could come up with a rationale that wasn't rooted in religion. Explaining the court's ruling, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that Sunday is a "time for family activity, for late sleeping, for passive and active entertainments, for dining out and the like...
Spurred by a budget crunch in 2002, Oregon became the first state to repeal its blue laws banning Sunday liquor sales. In response to the recession, a slew of other states are weighing whether to fall off the Sunday wagon, including Texas, Georgia, Connecticut and Alabama. Utah, though, is not one of them...
...Could there be a less likely venue in which to ask a woman in a blue T-shirt - "Go Slam a Salmon," it reads - about her plans to run for President? And yet this was the place where her answer finally made sense. It included none of the strange ramblings of her televised resignation speech, which managed, in pure Palin style, to be both plainspoken and inscrutable. For example: "Take the words of General MacArthur. He said, 'We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.' " And "Do you want me to make a positive difference and fight...