Grab your favorite adult beverage and settle in for a discussion of "a great social experiment" - AKA, the "noble experiment": the Prohibition of intoxicating liquor (in the Eighteenth Amendment)...and it's later wholesale repeal (in the Twenty-First Amendment).

The Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the "manufacture, sale, or transportation" of intoxicating liquors (which Congress later defined as anything with an alcohol content higher than 0.05 percent), but it didn't actually prohibit drinking it, possessing it, or making it for your own consumption. Why would anyone want to do this? Actually, a whole host of different groups with different agendas seemed to overlap just enough that they all favored prohibition for different reasons. While some groups had questionable motives, that doesn't mean that the greater goals of improving health, ensuring responsibility, and addressing other social issues wasn't still a good thing.

The political a…