Big Brother says, "Do not gamble online!"

Another effect on the 'moral' Christian right on the people of the United States, vis a vie the US Congress and Executive branch.

Conveniently attached to a port security bill (thanks to Sen. Frist (R-TN), Majority Leader in the Senate and proven American conservative), on Friday President Bush signed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (Title VII of HR 4954; voted 409 to two in the House) into a law. The Act is what it sounds like: a federal ban, via regulation, on Internet gambling in the United States.

Technically Internet gambling is already considered illegal, the provision under the Safe Ports Act (HR 4954) just gives authorities the power to regulate Internet gambling and prevents financial services (e.g. credit cards companies) and the transaction between the gambler and the gambling service. Nonetheless, it effectively paralyses the Internet gambling industry in the US; nearly all companies have shut down (they were given the option of selling shares at $1) and/or moved out of the country. Ergo, the Act keeps a leash on financial services and even internet service providers in its mission to stomp out Internet gambling.

I found here:

The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 was rammed through Congress by the Republican leadership in the final minutes before the election period recess. According to Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ), no one on the Senate-House Conference Committee had even seen the final language of the bill.

The prevention of American and outside internet gambling services is not only possibly against the WTO and other 'free trade' agreements (WTO, et al has regulatory power over the US government, the US government regulates what the American people can and can't do... what a system!) that this administration (and Congress) hold so dearly, but what harm — besides a loss of money for some — does gambling do to people? How much harm does it cause compared to other potentially life-destroying enterprises? Smoking and excess alcohol do much more harm, so if the US government wants to say what people can and can't do, making some 'bad' things illegal, they should start with the three big dangers: firearms, liquor, and tobacco. What about fast food? That surely does more financial (medical) and human (heart problems, etc.) than gambling. People can always just go to Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Windsor, or other casino towns anyway!

Smoking, drinking, guns, etc. have adverse effects on people themselves and people around them, while Internet gambling is done largely at home, not in public like smoking and drinking often are. Gambling online does not have the potentially deadly effect of the aforementioned big three, along with the fact that it is not a hazard to human life (except financially, but are we to shut down all the jewelry and electronics shops too? the government would have to under the financial damage excuse).

From this WP article:

"We're going to have Prohibition, and what happened then?" said champion poker player Annie Duke, a former University of Pennsylvania doctoral candidate who began playing professionally in 1994. "We had people running around with tommy guns and drinking moonshine because they weren't given a safe product."

Not only do they need to get their priorities straight, but the federal government needs to either start protecting people from the three biggest, sometimes under-regulated, dangerous items aforementioned, or they need to stay out of people's lives and just do some public service messages (e.g. "smoking is bad", "drinking in excess can cause liver damage", "don't sell out you our your family by gambling, it is not worth the loss of money", "report stolen or unregistered guns here", etc.).

I personally have no connection to Internet gambling, but it is the US government is going too far on this one — especially in one of the more libertarian (not that I agree with the ideology) countries led by people who call themselves "conservatives". American conservatism, ironically and especially in recent days, is not the 'conservatism' practiced elsewhere. Before, it was mostly an invasion of rights in the name of national security, now it is for "moral" reasons since the religious right has gained sway.

technorati tags: gambling, bush, president+bush, frist, senate, house, HR, tobacco, liquor, firearms, las+vegas, atlantic+city, gambling, regulation, unlawful, internet+gambling, act, bill, congress, , HR+4954, 4954, H.R.4954, majority+leader, bill+frist, us, usa, united+states, lautenberg, unlawful+gambling+enforcement+act, 2006, committee, house+of+representative, politics, news, law, wto, free+trade