It's stuff like this that makes people like me

Call me a wild-eyed libertarian but stories like this one rankle.

In a nutshell, a church's Christmas tree lot was shut down because it violated the Montgomery County law that prohibits sales of Christmas trees prior to Dec. 5.

You can count me in the group who is appalled at how early the commercial sector starts milking the holiday season each year but, honestly, a law?

Here's the best part: "officials could not determine why the law was enacted or even when, only that it was sometime in the late 1960s or early '70s".

Fantastic. Nobody knows why it's a law or even how long it's been a law.

This is why I sometimes think it would be much better if all laws had expiration dates and had to be renewed or cease being laws. You see, legislatures have to justify their existence, same as everybody else. They justify it by passing lots of laws. And those laws stack up. Until nobody knows or even can know them all. And that's when the law can become arbitrary in ways that are antithetical to the rule of law.

And that's not smiles times.

If they all had expiration dates then legislatures could busy themselves by re-authorizing the necessary ones and they wouldn't have to create busy work for themselves by crafting laws to deal with silly things like Christmas tree sales times.