Some of my favorite dumb laws are those ancient laws passed by legislators that are older than Strom Thurmond’s inner child that forbid “immoral” behavior back when Senators realized their country didn’t have a constitution. Now you know, and look, it only took 284 years for them to come around. Who says government works too slow?

According to the Associated Press, a Superior Court judge in North Carolina ruled the state’s law forbidding unwed couples from living together is unconstitutional.

As soon as the law passed, Satan himself appeared in the courtroom in a puff of black smoke and fire and announced that evil has finally been unleashed on the state of North Carolina followed by state legislators going, “See, I told you so.”

The suit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (motto: We sue because we love you) on behalf of a Pender County sheriff’s dispatcher who said the Sheriff Carson Smith threatened to fire her if she didn’t marry her boyfriend or move out of his house. The sheriff could not be reached for comment because he was in the middle of a difficult barn raising.

According to the story, the 2000 census shows that approximately 144,000 unmarried couples are living together in North Carolina and violating the proposed law blocked by the superior court judge. President Bush has vowed to mobilize the National Guard.