Is This Not Setting Off Some Red Flags??

The House is preparing a bill to make online gambling illegal.

Sponsored by Robert Goodlatte of Virginia and Jim Leach in Iowa. Man, they must really hate gambling. I mean, there's not a single casino in Iowa (there's 16 of them). But, I suppose it would have been just a little too obvious to have a representative from New Jersey or Nevada sponsor the damn thing. Clearly it's Las Vegas that stands to lose the most from online gambling - I mean there's no way people would go to a real casino if they can just gamble online ($10 billion in gambling revenue in 2005 in Las Vegas alone).

It seems a little odd that the nation's most corrupt industry is getting protectionist legislation and not a single person is saying a damn thing other than to note that it might be a little silly. And, I'm a little baffled at what they hope to accomplish. It's the idiots that go online and "get their feet wet" that end up filling up the Las Vegas (and Indian) Casino blackjack and poker tables.

I live sort of close to a casino (there's one in Milwaukee) where I COULD go to play poker. But I can't play a nickle-warm-up game there like I can online. The advantage of online play is that makes it cheap to play, so I feel comfortable going to the casino and blowing my money there. For a lot of "newbies" the online experience takes away a lot of the apprehension of walking into that poker room for the first time. I'd be willing to bet that if this thing passes and the feds are able to enforce it, that the Casinos will see a decrease in money earned from their poker operations.

So, I guess I'm not really sure what they're hoping to accomplish. Bob Goodlatte may dislike gambling, but there's hundreds of casinos all over this country - what does he care about online gambling just adding to the fray? My guess is because all of the online casinos are off-shore thus not going into his pocket. So - instead of making it illegal, they should be passing legislation to regulate online gambling inside the United States. Simple. Elegant. Done, problem solved (because we all know that the online casinos will just be run by the Las Vegas players, so they'll be getting their money they're so afraid they're losing).