well, Prohibition was wierd - not least that it was brought in by Republicans and revoked by Democrats.. you'd think it would have been the other way around! ;)
And why should drinking establishments close at a set time, I ask you?
I know, we have the same thing over here - closing time doesn't make us Irish drink any less, and closing time means there is a bottleneck - drunken people arrive out on the street at the same time - recipe for trouble.
New Orleans and Las Vegas don't have such stupid concepts, I believe...In fact in New Orleans there are (were?) bars that specialized in the late night crowd, say after 1 in the morning...