2015 Mercedes Marathon

All these people are breaking the law. (Frank Couch\fcouch@al.com)

(Frank Couch)

If you catch gar when fishing in Alabama, you can throw it back in the water, but you have to kill it first.

You can't sell someone a live chicken after dark.

And if you were training for that next marathon, stop now. Those things, and other contests of endurance, are against the law in this state.

At least they are for now.

A bill passed by the Alabama House this week would repeal more than 300 obsolete laws and regulations. Some have been ruled unconstitutional. Others, like one making it illegal to yield a party line in an emergency, have become obsolete because of technology. Some, like the prohibition of doing pretty much anything business related on Sunday, haven't been enforced as long as anyone can remember.

For your amusement, here are a few more.

In Alabama currently, it's illegal to:

Burn the teeth of a horse to make it appear younger before selling it.

Hunt on Sunday. Fish on Sunday. Shoot a gun on Sunday. (In fact, you might be best just not going outside at all, unless to church.)

Participate in or sponsor contests of endurance such as marathons.

Watch, sell tickets to, or participate in bear wrestling (unless, perhaps you are a deceased Alabama would-be football coach who needs a cool nickname).

In Alabama, it's illegal to sell a chicken after dark. (wikimedia commons)

And some taxes and fees are going away, too. If you want to catch and sell turtles to eat, you have to pay the government for that privilege. Clean hats? There's a license fee for that. There's even a business license required for "legerdemain and sleight of hand." That means magic shows, if you don't have a dictionary handy.

The bill is now headed to the Alabama Senate for consideration there.

If you think this is the Alabama Legislature we've been waiting for, don't get carried away.

The Alabama Legislature taketh away, and the Alabama Legislature giveth. It's not so much that lawmakers are removing useless laws as it is making room for new ones.

This week lawmakers in the Alabama House passed the Student Religious Liberties Act, which its own sponsor, Mack Butler, told me last month does nothing but make things legal that are already legal.

Under the new law, students may participate in student-led religious activities in school, which the federal courts have said already do not violate the division of church and state. Students will also be allowed to express their beliefs in their schoolwork.

If Butler had left it there, things might have been fine, but on the House floor, he told other lawmakers that the law would apply to all religions, even ones that are not religions yet.

"If you make up your own religion, it's covered," Butler told Rep. John Rogers.

Who needs a class in comparative religion when students can invent their own? (Thou shalt not assign homework.)

Not only will Alabama school students have their religious liberties double-dog protected by Alabama law and the U.S. Constitution, but judges and pastors will, too.

The Freedom of Religion in Marriage Protection Act, introduced by Rep. Jim Hill, will ensure that judges and clergy will not have to conduct marriages for same-sex couples if they don't want to.

Of course, the First Amendment of the Constitution already protects clergy from government interference, but what's a little thing like already-guaranteed Constitutional rights to stop Alabama lawmakers from grandstanding?

Finally, Rep. Lynn Greer wants to make sure that Alabama is ready to help death row prisoners across the great divide, even if it means bringing back the electric chair, which his bill, passed by the Alabama House this week, would do.

Under the new law, if Alabama doesn't have the drugs it needs for lethal injection, it's free to run up its power bill, instead.

More than a decade ago, Alabama retired its chair, Yellow Mama, in anticipation that the U.S. Supreme Court would rule that punishment unconstitutional. But on Thursday, the legislature reversed itself, again, bringing that issue potentially back to life.

The Alabama Legislature can make laws disappear and then materialize again.

Just like magic.

It's a good thing for them that the state license fee for legerdemain and sleight of hand could soon be repealed.