Petition to make St. Patrick's Day a national holiday

In a clever marketing ploy, Guinness claims it is sponsoring a petition in Congress to make St. Patrick’s Day a national holiday. Its Web site claims it needs 1 million signatures by March 17 to make it happen. As of 3:17 p.m. on March 15, it had 443,123.
Text of the petition:

Guinness and Proposition 3-17 supporters believe that a regulated, official holiday would not only reduce the amount of employees missing work in order to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, but officially allow people to express their Irishness.