Braves, Booze and Bombast

Since Fermi (Cosmic Cat, Recommended sidebar) is on vacation, I'm going to have to do her yearly rant on Georgia's Sunday ban of retail alcohol sales.

Here in our fair state you can go to a sporting event, a restaurant or a bar and drink adult beverages on Sunday; but, you can't buy them at retail and take them home.

Each year our Legislators and the Governor wrangle over Sunday sales. Our Governor, Sunny Perdue, a Southern Baptist, doesn't drink and doesn't have much use for anyone that does. Last year he weighed in on the debate saying that Sunday sales weren't necessary - people just had to be better time managers and buy their booze ahead of time.

This year the debate is spiced up a bit by two factors. Gwinnett County (north-metro Atlanta) is building a new baseball stadium to house one of the Atlanta Brave's farm teams. It needs a Sunday liquor license but doesn't qualify under any of the current exemptions. So our Legislators and Sonny Perdue are on board for a special statute to allow the stadium to sell booze on Sunday. Ditto with a special statute to let limousine companies sell booze to their patrons.

The Speaker of the House and the Governor don't get along. The former tacked a Sunday sales amendment onto the special baseball law. The Guv is threatening to veto it, which will piss off Gwinnett County and the Braves.

This year the Governor's theme is safety. He cites a study that examined New Mexico in the five years after it allowed Sunday retail alcohol sales and found an increased incidence of alcohol related accidents and deaths. Given his mandate to protect our safety, he has to give short shrift to his "Republican principle of individual freedom" and can't entrust us to choose for ourselves (unless we are Gwinnett County, the Atlanta Braves or a limo company).

The Nanny State is not the exclusive property of liberals. When coupled with religion, it's alive and well in Republican Georgia.