Beer-swilling Americans, globally regarded as the very Platonic ideal of refinement and taste, are renowned for their refined palates. They certainly are not the type of people to sit around on the back bumper of a pickup truck and drink themselves senseless on literally any form of alcoholic liquid no matter how disgusting while ranting about unfavored sports teams. So it is newsworthy to report that this group of gourmets is now being enticed to drink their beer out of a humble can.

Excessive drinking costs the American economy more than $220 billion a year, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which is enough to really make you need a drink.

From the 21-year-old drinking age to the .08% blood alcohol level now recognized nationwide as evidence of being drunk, the threat of losing federal highway funds has kept America's states from straying on booze laws. So get ready for the .05% drunken driving conviction.

If the moral theologians in practice among us were engined by anything properly describable as apostolic zeal, they would be giving over a large part of their time, in these apocalyptic days, to teaching their catechumens how to drink. For it must be manifest that some such teaching is sorely needed in this great republic. Drinking with skill and taste is no more a natural art than love; either it must be learned by the onerous process of trial and error, or it must be taught. Plainly enough, the latter way is the better; but so far there is no sign that the guides appointed for gropers are ready to take it.

Ten years ago today, Michael Bloomberg made it illegal for selfish smokers to stink up our boozing. World's Best Nanny!

People who are uneducated boors generally assume that college is little more than a four year-long fraternity party during which the main activity is drinking vast quantities of intoxicating liquor. That's not true at all; it takes many frat boys six years to finish college. Haha, but seriously folks, I'm not very drunk at all right now—thanks to college.

Which country on earth parties harder than any other country? YOU WILL NEVER GUESS WITHOUT LOOKING AT THE ABOVE HEADLINE.

New Mexico wants to ban people convicted of DUI from buying any alcohol, anywhere. Fine. As long as they don't ban guns.

What can save a declining beer brand? Drunker customers.

For three long, cold years, the hardworking men and women in the beer industry have had to hang their heads, in the knowledge that we Americans have been buying less, and less, and less beer, ever since 2008. Soda? Sure, we can't get enough of that sweet stuff. But beer? Good old-fashioned mass-produced alcoholic gut-swelling, cirrhosis-inducing beer? We just haven't been interested. Until now.

If any human right is inalienable, it is the right to get obliterated with your friends before running ass naked into the same waters in which Jesus once swam. Today, some awful people are trying to take away that right, and we mustn't let them.

On tonight's Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert took a hard line on the new trend of teens drinking hand sanitizer to get drunk. The trend is dangerous and it's coming for your kids, even if you don't have any. But fear not, for Colbert has the perfect solution: hide your Purell in a secure vault and wash off your hands with vodka.

The New York Post has a rather alarming (and alarmist) article on a potential happy hour ban in the city. They cite a lot of mysterious Department of Health sources, so it's difficult to confirm any of this — but when anyone suggests a serious threat to cheap drinking, panic is the appropriate response.

TMZ is breathless to tell you that The Hunger Games' Josh Hutcherson "tricks grocery store into selling him whiskey." The up-and-comer, who plays Peeta in the film and its inevitable sequels, is only 19 and has thus probably never tasted alcohol before. What could have pushed him to such vile deceit?

Just when you thought the kids had discovered every possible way to ingest alcohol, they went ahead and started soaking tampons in vodka and shoving them up their rectums.

Wheel of Fortune host and stealth tea partier Pat Sajak gave an interview to ESPN 2's Dan Le Batard and revealed that he and Vanna White used to get so drunk on the set of their show, they "had trouble recognizing the alphabet."

Guys: Mayor Bloomberg does not want to take away your booze. Yes, the Health Department is considering a proposal to "curb excessive drinking" in New York City. (For this, the Post calls him a "party pooper," Animal NY calls him a hypocrite, and Gothamist calls him Nanny Bloomberg.") Yes, he thinks you probably drink too much. (To be fair: you do.) Yes, he's a sucky mayor. But he's not really doing anything here except that will make your life harder, unless you are an asshole (or, to be fair, in the employ of the booze business). Let's be clear about what the proposals actually are, according to the Post:

After studying 208 unmarried couples and their drinking habits, researchers at Canada's Dalhousie University have discovered that the binge-drinking of one partner in a relationship often transfers to the other partner. Alcohol abuse is a contagious disease.

A new study by the National Institutes of Health shows a 30-year high (LOL) in the incidence of marijuana usage among high school students, even while drinking and other drug use has declined. Don't they know that marijuana is a dangerous illegal drug, while alcohol is a perfectly legal way to talk to people at parties? There's a reason it's called "dope," you know.

Does Herman Cain just drink constantly on the campaign trail? We didn't hear much about this as he was becoming the frontrunner, but the faster he plummets, and the more his allies turn on him, the more delicious these stories should become! It's already starting.