Beer at the game?

I understand that University of Minnesota regents sometimes like to believe that they are above the law. That may be because sometimes they constitutionally are.

Today they agreed to ban sale of alcoholic beverages at all of their sporting events. This follows the legislature’s bipartisan requirement that they, if they provided for the selling of beer in luxury seats at the new South Dakota Bank Stadium that they be required to sell to all legal aged people in the stadium.

But the staff and regents seem to be sniveling a little. It seems a little funny since beer sales are available stadium-wide where they play now. But they seem to think that in order to have a first-class football program that they need to sell beer to bigwigs.

They point out that most Big Ten football programs make such sales available.

Three Big Ten universities do not sell beer in their stadia. They are Penn State, Michigan and Ohio State.

Strange.

Police powers, anachronism, inertia, or reason? Liquor regulation

Federal courts have ruled that states have rights in alcohol-related matters that they do not have in other things. As a result, in addition to having minimum drinking age rules, we have regulations on days, hours, and means of distribution and sales; controls on advertising; bans on conduct in places where alcoholic beverage is served which would not apply elsewhere; we have “dry” jurisdictions and government-owned liquor stores; and we have distinctions between “strong” and “3.2” beer. Locally, we have some liquor stores who have the additional license clause that prevents selling small liquor bottles.

Some of these things come from the whole national trauma from the temperance/Prohibition era. Other matters come from our heritage of blue laws.
These regulations seem anachronistic. But I do wonder whether some of them do not serve a purpose.

Colorado recently allowed Sunday openings for liquor stores. Minnesota does not. According to a resent US News & World Report article, fourteen other states besides ours still have this prohibition.

The big controversy we seem to have in our state is whether grocery stores should be allowed to sell wine or liquors. Nobody seems to have thought of the Sunday ban.

Do we keep these regulations because [with apologies to Mr. Soucheray] nothing is allowed here and we want to keep it that way? or do we keep these regulations because there are legitimate public health, safety, or welfare [the traditional "police powers"] reasons? or is it just inertia?

Flak for Thune? An Apology?

Dave Thune has been getting some flak for stating that downtown residents don’t want 8.000 “puking Republican lobbyists in the streets at four in the morning.” [A wise guy would then ask what time they wanted them puking, but there is no wisdom here, is there?]

Even though his record indicates that Thune does not ever deserve the benefit of a doubt, it might not be too far out of line to be at least a little understanding on this one. I doubt if the people who live downtown [or in any other of our city’s neighborhoods] want anybody puking downtown, regardless of occupation or political affiliation. But somehow, Senator Sandra Pappas thought it necessary to apologize for his comment on the floor or the Minnesota Senate.

Well, Thune is one of her constituents, but doesn’t this take constituent services a bit far?

But it seems to me that the apology is excessive and unnecessary. After all, Senators are relatively well aware of political processes and the speech they entail and should be able to give the councilmember’s comments a proper perspective. And although to many of us outsiders, they both seem to be part of the flaky, intolerant left, there must be more than the High Bridge separating Pappas from Thune.

And the Boy Wonder noted that Saint Paul is not Las Vegas. No, it is not. You can still smoke there.

Which brings us to the real difference: The real drinking for the cigars, the lobbyists and power players, will not be in our saloons and bars nor in the saloons and bars of Mpls. or Bloomington or anyplace else in our area. That action will be moved to suites and rooms where the cigars can do what gives them their name.

And the hanging, unanswered question would be, “Why wouldn’t we take this step for other conventions and groups that use our city?” After all, we wouldn’t want people to think that attorneys, lawyers, clergypeople, hardware dealers, ice hockey fans, dentists, baton twirlers [at least their over-21 chaperones], and others to be denied the amenities that we give the Republicans.

Previous post: You might want to drink late too [3/28/08]

Related articles: [from Minnesota Monitor]: Pappas apologizes for Thune's 'puking Republicans' remark

RNC: St. Paul says 'no' to 4 a.m. bar close

You might want to drink late too

Let me see if I have this right. Legislative leaders, at least some of them, want to open the bars until 4:00 am during the GOP convention, so that our visitors will have a good impression of our city and/or area.

I suspect it would. Politicians [and maybe GOP politicians in particular] expect communities to surrender whatever values they may have to spur progress and the people who can bring progress about which is what they imagine themselves to be.

But Phyllis Kahn who seems to be promoting most of this balked at a temporary lifting of the smoking ban.

Go figure.

[Of course, having to go to a combination to nominate McCain and laud seven years of W is probably just cause to really drink.]

I would just as soon let the visitors see us as we are, worried about the effects around-the-clock drinking can have on society, concerned about how late we make our hospitality workers work, and totally intolerant.

Another Look at Drinking Age

In a November post, TOAST THANKSGIVING [if you’re old enough], 11/23/07, I suggested that our national age 21 minimum drinking age, brought upon us by a congress that lacked the backbone to stand up to Mothers Against the Due Process [MADD] might not be such a bright idea.

That minimum, remember, was set to help avoid having legal adults sell or give alcoholic beverages to underage friends, relatives, or customers. MADD found it easier to push that legislation than to go after the people of any age who were breaking the law. It made no difference whether one was speaking about a blind 20-year-old in New York City who moved about by subway or an 18-year-old in Montana. One size fits everybody, MADD thinks.

I despaired then [and still do] that there will be enough legislators or Congresspeople to effect any change, but do notice that a few voices in legislatures around our Republic have noticed some problems.

A recent Time post [Vermont Eyes Lower Drinkng Age, 2/29/08] has called attention to some of these changes. The Vermont legislature is looking at this, a Senate committee yesterday approving a bill to authorize a commission to weigh the pros and cons of rolling back the drinking age.

That’s a long way from actually doing something, but it may be all we see for quite a whileAnd it’s certainly not what I was suggesting then which is removing the minimum drinking age from law and making it a private, family matter.

But it is something. Maybe.

TOAST THANKSGIVING [if you’re old enough]

Yesterday many of us had turkey, farm-grown, fattened and accompanied by a lot of trimmings – dressing, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes with gravy, and pumpkin and/or mince meat pie. Often this meal was shared with extended family or friends. And in houses around our republic, wine was an accompaniment to all of this gustatory bounty.

But if in any of those houses somebody born on or after November 23, 1986 partook of that wine, a law was broken.

That same person could legally have had coffee, and if over 18 enjoyed a nice, postprandial cigar, other things usually done more by adults than children.

The basic fact is that in Minnesota that the legal age for just about anything is 18 except to drink [21] and to consent to sex [16]. In a way it seems funny that one can consent to sex before one can sign a contract and one can sign a contract before one can have a glass of wine with the family on a festive occasion. These are two subjects which have preoccupied America for a long time, sometimes to a very obsessive degree, and, on the surface at least, we would seem to have resolved them differently.

The higher age for drinking was influenced by Mothers Against Due Process [MADD] who managed to convince Congress to coerce states to lower the minimum drinking age or lose highway funds.

One of the reasons given for lowering the age was that too many 18-, 19-, and 20-year old people were legally obtaining beer, wine, or spirits and then illegally making them available to 16-and 17-year olds. Rather then enforce those laws,, they found it easier to take rights away from all the elders.

It seems to have some of the same logic as saying that because illegal Mexican immigrants might hide in the local Chicano community, that we ought to deport the entire Chicano community to make enforcement of immigration laws easier. [I suspect that Paul Harvey, Lou Dobbs and a lot of politicians have thought of that one, but a little technicality called the Fourteenth Amendment got into the way.]

There is no direct correlation between drinking and road construction, but that did not stop them from pushing their idea. So if you are twenty years of age and have never driven a car, are blind and never intend to, and live in a transit-orientated place like Manhattan or Chicago, you still cannot drink because a 17-year old in Nebraska might somehow illegally obtain a beer and get into his big brother's pickup in a vain attempt to impress his girlfriend.

If we abolished the minimum drinking age we could minimize some of our problems. A child could learn to drink the same way he/she learns other things that come with maturation, from family, educational and religious organizations, and friends, just as a child learns other things an adult does [dressing, shaving, eating, consuming other liquids, personal hygiene, thinking, reading, etc.] as one matures. There would be no magic moment at which one could get up just before midnight to imbibe as much as one could before closing time, no “power hour.”

I know that seems too radical a change for many. It won’t happen, I am sure. But I do advocate that people start thinking of it.