Smooth Rider

After the Port Security Bill passed through Congress and now awaits W's rubber stamp, some thoughts.

Of course, I'm only referring to the Internet Gambling Prohibition and Enforcement Act (introduced by *shock* a Republican and supported by *again shock* more Republicans). There is a lot of commentary about how this Act was tacked on to the Port Security Bill by Senator Frist and some House counterpart (you mean, they're Republicans too?!? Who would've guessed).

Some comments...

Don't you think that the American government should have bigger fish to fry than to be messing around with Internet poker !!! The reason they are messing with it is simple as most Internet poker sites ( if not all )are outside of the US they don't have to pay tax to them if they had been in the US nothing would of been said !!!!

Our government (i.e., Senators like Frist) are every bit as 'immoral' as gambling is.

I think there are some evils to gambling. But what people do with their own money is their bussiness, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody. How dare the congressman have such a nerve to look down on what we do as immoral. Screw them.

Thank you to all in the Senate for making this wonderful country even more free and safe from all the terrible internet gamblers living in the US.

There are many more comments on the online petition.

Yeah, it sucks that this pork got added to a totally unrelated bill. But it happens all the time. Yeah, I feel wonderful that Republicans want to protect our morality with this Internet Gambling Prohibition and Enforcement Act. Hi, Bill Bennet! Hi, Mark Foley! But it's not a Republican thing. Or a Democrat thing. It's a politician thing. It's happened in the past, it's happening now, and it will happen later.

We can blame the politicians, sure, but this Act probably was kept alive because there was not more of an outcry from people. And that's because opponents of this Act did not do enough to make anyone aware of the Act. I am fairly well-read and aware of what's going on, but I did not know about this. I think I first became aware of this Act when the bill passed the House. And most of the voices online only offered their comments AFTER the bill passed via voice vote in the Senate. Citizens cannot affect Congress and the government too much, but they certainly cannot do much if they don't know about things.

We'll see what happens...

UPDATE: the Association of Professional Casino Webmasters has some more info, and a video, about this Act.