A toast to Sabbath we once worshiped.(NEWS)

Byline: JAMES LILEKS; STAFF WRITER

Last week this space discussed whether the smoking ban in bars should be tweaked to unban bar smoking. Now a legislator has introduced a bill that would allow liquor to be sold on Sundays. It's as if every law concerning "vice," to use a quaint term, is up for discussion. Next week they'll reconsider the ban on swearing in front of horses, or approve robot cockfighting at Canterbury. (Expected to be a $12 billion industry by 2147.)

I'd guess the prevailing public mood on the question of Sunday hooch is A) No, and B) Whatever. People in the B camp have responded to Sunday bans with a crafty, ingenious work-around -- they shop on Saturday. I know, I know, sounds unbelievable, but I've seen it happen. Heck, I've done it. You ask: What if you're having a dinner party, and you realize you have no wine? Nightmare! All you can do is bribe your dentist for a tank of laughing gas, put it under the table and open up the valve just a little bit, and serve grape juice. Same difference, except a few people at the table apologize for not flossing more.

The No camp either doesn't see any need to let people sop up Demon Rum any more than necessary, or holds to the idea that Sunday is a special day. That horse is out of the barn, though, and shopping at Target. Wasn't always so. When I grew up in North Dakota, nothing was open on Sunday. The TV would have shows like "Bowling Highlights of 1954," periodically interrupted by a stern-looking fellow who'd say, "Shouldn't you be visiting Grandma today? She'd love to see you."

The mall lots were empty, grocery stores were closed, wolves paced the streets of downtown, snapping at tumbleweeds. You could get milk at a convenience store, but decent people shopped ahead. If you saw someone's car in the Stop-n-Go lot it was like seeing your principal walk out of an adult bookstore.

I exaggerate. Or, more accurately, lie. But Sundays did feel different -- incredibly boring was how the average teen would put it. The world slowed down, practically stopped rotating about 6 p.m. and you woke Monday ready for another five-round bout with the workweek.

For many of today's indispensable busy people, Sunday is just early Monday, you check your e-mail and schedules, which would have been as absurd in 1974 as strolling past your boss' house whistling, in case he saw you and wanted to bark out some instructions on the Johnson Contract. Things could wait.

Not any more! And since we're changing all the rules, perhaps we could allow car dealerships to be open on Sunday. For all I know they don't want to open: You have six years between purchases. You can find an open Saturday in there somewhere, bud. But how many people would bang on the doors with fistfuls of cash, begging to buy a car so they can make a beer run to Wisconsin? Thousands. Well, dozens. Per decade.

Point is, we're trained not to expect cars to be available for inspection on Sunday, just as we would never expect to see alcohol in a grocery store, thanks to the Forcing People to Make Several Stops Act of 1917.

Just to show how peculiar the blue laws get: You can get beer in grocery stores, but it's 3.2, or "Quasi-beer," the weak stuff whose origins trace back to Prohibition. I can see why that distinction would be important if Coolidge was president and the sports section was devoted to flagpole-sitting contests, but as someone who worked in a 3.2 joint in college, it has the same power to make its consumers go wobbly-legged and mumble-mouthed. It's like a car with a top speed of 62 mph and one door -- which you can't buy on Sunday.

Look, you want to make Sunday special, pass a law that bans TV and does a Mubarak on the Internet until midnight, and people who feel compelled to check their work e-mail will be forced to sit in a room and interact with humans instead of preparing for the 7 a.m. meeting about maximizing stakeholder interaction. That would make a difference, but people would really complain. Not that they need TV and the Internet on Sunday. Not like they're addicted. They can stop any time.

jlileks@startribune.com - 612-673-7858 More daily at www.startribune.com/popcrush.