A change of Virginia law went into effect this week effectively reinstating archaic "blue laws," a centuries-old regime preventing businesses from operating on Sundays. This act, by itself, would open them to well-deserved critcism, but it's even worse: they did it by mistake.
Even as they raced to solve the problem, the state's leading politicians sought to avoid blame for what they acknowledged was an embarrassing mistake.
In a letter to members, the state chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business said everyone in the lawmaking process was at fault.
"Nobody caught this -- not the legislator who sponsored the bill [Sen. Frederick M. Quayle (R-Chesapeake)], not the legislators who voted for the bill . . . not the governor who signed the bill and none of the lobbyists who watch for such bad bills," the letter said.
In other words, every single member of the Virginia legislature is an idiot.
Every single one.
Today, a Richmond judge compounded the error by suspending the law for 90 days - apparently not for any legal reason, but just because the law was a bad idea. The judge even acknowledged that there were "Constitutional impediments" with his ruling, and that he was "treading on the legislative perogative," but suspended the law anyway. How's that for activist jurisprudence?
Finally, the editors at the Post are idiots for allowing this line to go to print unchanged: "Business leaders are most worried about Sunday, because that's the day the majority of Virginians, who are Christian, consider a religious holy day." Perhaps they meant to say, "many Virginians, the majority of whom are Christian..." instead of implying that all Virginians are Christian and the majority of those consider Sunday their holy day. (And I wonder where they got that factoid from anyway... I'm sure it's possible, but they certainly didn't cite any source.)
Posted by wasylik at July 2, 2004 08:55 PM | TrackBack