Abraham Lincolnin his message to Congress on De<br > cember 11 862saidThe dogmas of the past are in<br > adequate to the stormy presentAs our case is new<br > we must think anew and act anew<br > More than a hundred years laterour lawmakers are<br > tryinR to catch up with him<br > For every safe and sound lawthere are hundreds of<br > idiotic ordinances that remain to clutter up our legal<br > booksLegislative bodies are always passing lawsbut<br > never bothering to repeal them after they have served<br > their purposeVery seldom is anything ever done about<br > these ludicrousarchaicand strange statutes<br > I am not a lawyernor have I studied lawbut as a<br > journalistI have spent a good part of my life researching<br > and uncovering these lawswhich are alive in all fifty<br > statestheir citiestownsand villagesand a host of<br > such laws of many countries around the worldI have<br > uncovered more than 2000 of these laws in the United<br > States aloneHere are a smattering of themMany of<br > these strangeludicrousand archaic laws are anno-<br > tatedthe Code NumberSectionetc)while others are<br > quoted from the recordsAs many of the laws and or-<br >