Three Roads Blog

Sarah Vowell, writing for the Times:

Here’s what Dr. King got out of the Sermon on the Mount. On Nov. 17, 1957, in Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, he concluded the learned discourse that came to be known as the “loving your enemies” sermon this way: “So this morning, as I look into your eyes and into the eyes of all of my brothers in Alabama and all over America and over the world, I say to you: ‘I love you. I would rather die than hate you.’ ”

Go ahead and re-read that. That is hands down the most beautiful, strange, impossible, but most of all radical thing a human being can say. And it comes from reading the most beautiful, strange, impossible, but most of all radical civics lesson ever taught, when Jesus of Nazareth went to a hill in Galilee and told his disciples, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.”

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In this age of a slower, grubbier mutually assured destruction, when no one’s typed the word “nonviolence” since the typewriter, it’s worth reading Dr. King’s quarrel with the cold war’s MAD ploy. In the “loving your enemies” text he tells a pretty little parable about how one night his brother A. D. drove him to Tennessee. Infuriated by all the other cars’ brights, A. D. vowed to crank his lights and blind the next driver passing by. Dr. King told him not to, that it would just get everybody killed. “Somebody got to have some sense on this highway,” he said.

With the Mitchell report in the headlines, I thought this would be a timely Christmas gift for the disenchanted sports fan in your life. Click here to buy a mug.

From the Denver Post:

A little-known law allows each grocery chain to apply for a license to sell full-strength beer, wine and hard liquor in just one of its Colorado stores. A handful of chains have gone that route, including Safeway, which recently opened a Littleton store where shoppers can pick up a bottle of vodka with their loaf of bread.

I don’t want to imply that I’m so desperate for the booze that the Colorado blue law baning Sunday liquor sales is a major thorn in my side, but there have certainly been times that it has been a major hassle–hassle enough that I might would have trekked to Littleton to pick up a bottle.

The Post article reports that the legislature is once again going to try to repeal our antiquated blue laws. They didn’t have any luck beating the liquor store lobby in 2005, the last time they attempted to alter the status quo. The article doesn’t mention anything that would suggest the outcome will be any different this time around.

On last check, the online version of the article has 85 comments.