Re: Scotus 11: Will Thomas Ever Speak Again?
Talk about pure BS as it pertains to his statement.
While this is all pretty irrelevant to the larger picture I'm still confused about it. Here's what you said:
I just missed the grandfather clause in MN and I know what the age was and was not for myself when I was 17 going on 18 and beyond. If I had been asked, "What was the drinking age when you were 17" I'd have said without hesitation, "21 and I just missed being grand-fathered in for 18" because I've actually had that conversation more than once. There is no reason whatsoever for him to have said it was 18 (while knowing for him it was not) other than to try and minimize it. Just stop.
I don't get it because I'm pretty sure the drinking age in MN was 19 from the mid 70's until the mid 80's when it was raised to 21. Those 19 by the day it went to 21 were grandfathered in. This fact obviously doesn't jive with what you are saying about missing being grandfathered for 18. Either you missed being grandfathered at 18 when it went to 19, in which case the drinking age was 18 or 19, not 21 while you were in HS, or you missed being grandfathered for 21, in which case you were just turning 19, (presumably) weren't in HS, have no experience with alcohol ever being legal for HS students, and the drinking age was still in fact 19 when you were in HS. So in no case that I can see, despite you having had the conversation frequently, could the drinking age have been 21 when you were in HS. Were you just drunk when these conversations took place?
My experience was that 18 was the drinking age, which is a huge difference from 19 or 21. HS Seniors of age could buy alcohol legally. They'd go out for lunch and beers and come back to school, They would meet at bars after school, and they would buy the alcohol for the parties. People are shocked now, but my HS paid for all the kegs at Senior Baccalaureate where parents, teachers, and students all got plowed together on the school's dime. It was a completely different world and culture as it pertains to HS students and drinking than it became even just a few years later. Since my experience is similar to Kavanaugh's, at least through his junior year in MD, and given that 18 year olds could still legally buy alcohol just 4 miles from campus in DC his senior year, I really have no problem with what he said about the drinking age and would say the same thing myself. As irrelevant as it is.