Response to my Fox column on the Internet gambling ban has been brisk and angry. I’ve received about 75 messages in strong opposition to the ban, just two supporting it. More interestingly, many of those in opposition describe themselves as either apolitical, conservative, or advocates of limited government. And because of this issue alone, they’re all voting for the Democrats.

I particularly like the phrase coined by one angry poker player, “The Green Felt Revolution.” A sampling after the break.

(Note: Due to volume, I didn’t bother editing the responses.)
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My new Fox column slaps the GOP around for the Internet gambling ban.

I’ll share email reaction a bit later. So far, confirmation of my suspicions. Lots of Republicans promising that this issue alone will push them to vote for Democrats next month.

I’ve been trying for months to get reporters to cover is the free trade angle of the Internet gambling ban. Not only is the U.S. trying to impose its own laws and values on the rest of the world, (1) it’s doing so in a manner that protects a U.S. company — Paypal — from overseas competitors, and (2) the exemptions the bill allows for state lotteries, horse racing, and fantasy sports are a blatant violation of the WTO.

The WTO allows a country to ban some goods and services within its borders (Muslim countries with alcohol, for example), but you can’t ban a good or service from another country while allowing it to be sold from domestic providers. That’s sort of the whole point of “free trade.” The gambling ban does exactly that.

This has already been hashed out before. The tiny country of Antigua filed a WTO complaint against the U.S. last year, well before this latest law was passed. Antigua won its complaint in March. The Bush administration — free trade champion through and through — has chosen to simply ignore the ruling.

What’s interesting is that under WTO rules, Antigua is then permitted to retaliate. And what’s really interesting is just how the plucky little islanders might retaliate:

There’s no appetite for slapping trade sanctions on US goods; that would hurt Antiguan companies and consumers far more than Americans. Instead, the country may refuse to enforce American patents and trademarks. This would make it possible for Antiguan-based companies to produce knock-offs of American intellectual property, like video and music recordings or computer software. Such a tactic would get the attention of major US firms like Microsoft Corp. and entertainment titan Time Warner Inc. It would also put tiny Antigua’s trade war against the United States on front pages around the world.

Remember, all of this took place before the latest bill, which I think has even stronger free trade implications than the 1961 Wire Act (which served as governing federal law on Internet gambling until last month). Enforce this bill, and you could well see a couple of dozen countries that house gaming servers follow suit, each declaring themselves safe havens for IP pirates. And not just tiny bumps in the ocean. Britain stands to lose a couple billion in tax revenue from this bill.

All of this could well mean a mammoth clash of wills and special interests is in the offing, with Big Pharma, Hollywood, Big Software, and RIAA butting heads with the moral crusaders, eBay, and professional sports. And that, of course, would be terrific fun for the rest of us.

And all because Bob Goodlatte thinks card playin’ is fer’ the devil.

Thanks to Cato’s Sallie James for the tip.

I’ve been getting a lot of email from people about the gambling ban. Much has come from people who ran a few Google searches, found one of my artricles on the ban, and are now pretty honked off about it all.

At risk of falling victim to the pundit’s fallacy, I think this is going to come back to bite Frist and the GOP. Think about it. Over the last week, some 10-15 million Americans who play online poker logged on to their favorite poker sites, only to get a message telling them that, thanks to the U.S. Congress, they’re no longer allowed to play. The GOP just politicized a rather large group of people who heretofore were rather apolitical. And they skew rather wealthy.

Of course, we run into the same old problem: Are the Democrats any better? They ought to be. If they were smart, they’d carry this issue into the home stretch, holding it out as an example of a Republican Party that doesn’t give a damn about indidual rights, and has nothing but contempt for the “leaves us alone” crowd. And they’d position themselves as an alternative, at least when it comes to matters of “what you do in your own home is your own business.” It’s a winner. The people who passionately believe in an online gambling ban weren’t going to vote for them any way. And in any case, it’s a rather small group of people to begin with. Most conservatives are opposed to this bill.

The Democrats should send Barney Frank out to do the Sunday morning talk shows.

And if you’re someone who will be voting against the GOP because of this particular issue, seek out an exit pollster, and let them know.

Been doing interviews all day, including one with the BBC, which should air tonight.

Here’s the statement I issued through Cato:

This bill is paternalistic, moralizing big government at its worst. It won’t eradicate online gambling, it will only make those gambling sites that are incorporated and publicly traded and regulated in countries like Great Britain unavailable to U.S. customers. But the $12 billion per year U.S. customers spend on online gaming won’t dry up. Instead, much of it will now go shady offshore sites based in countries less steeped in the rule of law, meaning more potential for fraud, abuse, preying on minors, and involvement from organized crime and terrorist groups. Meanwhile, state lotteries (which studies show are among the most addictive forms of gambling) will exploit the exemption the bill grants them, and continue to spend millions of dollars encouraging their citizens to engage in government-run gambling, with far less favorable odds.

From House Republican leaders’ baffling attempts to invoke the shame of Jack Abramoff and pass the ban in the name of “lobbying reform,” to Senator Frist attaching the ban to a port security bill late at night on the last day of Congress, nothing about the way the GOP has pushed this bill has been honest. It is the height of hubris that the last law enacted by a party beset by charges of corruption and abuse of power was a moralistic bill passing judgment on the millions of Americans who play online poker and other games recreationally and responsibly.

President Bush just signed the port security bill, which included the ban on Internet gambling.

Bill Bennett tries to light a fire under the base.

A light fisking:

Look, if you want John Paul Stevens replaced on the Supreme Court with a carbon copy, pro-choice, pro-racial preferences Justice, stay home.

Though I’m pro-life, I’ll gladly trade a pro-Roe, pro-affirmative action justice who gives a damn about the Fourth Amendment, civil liberties, and is willing to put the proper constitutional restraints on executive power over a pro-authority, pro-government justice like Alito. If Bush-approved justices like Scalia, Alito, or Roberts were at least principled federalists, I might be able to overlook the other stuff. But Bush doesn’t have the cajones to nominate someone like Janice Rogers Brown. Seems to me that the choice is between a big government justice who will sometimes err on the side of civil liberties versus a big government justice who won’t. Easy decision.

If you want Donald Rumsfeld hauled before Congress every week justifying the war rather than fighting it, stay home.

A little congressional oversight about the why and the how this war has been waged and fought would be a good thing. We’re closing in on 3,000 dead U.S. troops, now. And 600,000 dead Iraqis. And the Army’s now making plans to keep 150,000 troops in Iraq until 2010. I didn’t buy into this war even given the rosy predictions this administration and its supporters made in 2002. But this isn’t even the war we were promised. So yeah. I wouldn’t mind if someone in Congress hauled Rummy in to ask him some tough questions about what went wrong.

If you want spending to increase even above the levels you are unhappy with now, stay home.

Please. This administration, with the aid of Congress, has outspent Clinton, Carter, and by some measures, even LBJ. They’ve given us the biggest new federal entitlement in 40 years. I’ll take my chances with divided government, thanks.

If you want Henry Waxman holding hearings on every aspect of the administration’s actions, stay home.

Again, a little oversight — a responsibility the Constitution specifically gives to Congress — would be welcome. Since when do conservatives recoil at the thought of accountable government? What exactly have the Republicans been doing with their oversight responsibilities? Oh yes. I nearly forgot. They’ve chastising baseball players for using steroids. Because that’s much more important than investigating, for example, whether or not the federal government is unlawfully spying on its citizens.

If you want to see the war in Iraq defunded to the point of withdrawal so that the worst elements in Iraq take over and a repeat of the helicopters-fleeing-Saigon-type-images come back all over again, signaling a decade-long disrespect and doubt of American power, stay home.

Wait. I thought Iraq was nothing like Vietnam! I thought things were going really swell over there — it’s just that the em-ess-em refuses to report the good news?!? Is Bennett saying we are no closer to success in Iraq today than we were in Vietnam in 1974? Also, how exactly does getting 8-10 U.S. troops picked off each week while Iraq descends into chaos project power and might? And is there really much room for our image overseas to sink any lower?

If you want to keep the border unsealed, stay home.

Fine by me. But I thought this was the one issue where red meat conservatives loathe the GOP. Shouldn’t they be punishing the Repbulicans for their failure to seal the border?

Two years ago we sent a message by reelecting the President, have things fallen so hard since then that we can’t muster those numbers again and see that the good should not be traded in for the bad? You want to rue a day? You will rue a day with John Conyers as head of the House Judiciary and Pat Leahy as head of the Senate Judiciary. Don’t do it. Please don’t do it.

Sounds desperate. I wouldn’t mind Pat Leahy heading up judiciary. He’s one of the few in Congress who still at least pays lip service to civil liberties. Conyers is a gasbag, but certainly no worse than James friggin’ Sensensbrenner, the man who wants to throw parents in jail for refusing to report their kids’ drug habits to the police.

Also, what “good” has transpired for conservatives since 2004? Did President Bush sneak through some new tax cuts I didn’t hear about? Did he eliminate a cabinet while I wasn’t looking?

Oh yes. I know what it was.

The Internet gambling ban. Huge victory. Yay freedom! That’s why we need at least two more years of GOP rule. More bans on bad stuff you can do on the Internet.

Look at it this way, Bill. Your radio show will have lots more to talk about when we have a Speaker Pelosi.

Smart op-ed in the New York Times today on how the Internet gambling ban will shut down important information markets like TradeSports, and why that’s a bad thing.

If you’ll remember, there was once some talk about the Pentagon setting up information markets for world events, including things like assassinations and terrorist attacks. Those plans were squashed after outcry from people who couldn’t bear the though of anyone making a profit off of human suffering, despite the fact that those markets would likely have provided valuable insight into the when and where and how of terrorism.

Now, the same Congress that has been all over the newspapers the last few years for its own moral shortcomings plans to rob the public of an important informational tool — again because a few people think their own moral values are important enough to be enshrined into law. Sigh.

Late Friday night, the U.S. Senate passed a ban on Internet gambling. The ban now awaits President Bush’s signature.

Sen. Bill Frist attached the ban to the port security bill at the last minute on Friday, conveniently allowing the ban to go forward without any debate. That also means any Senator who rightly believes that online poker is none of the government’s business would also have to vote against a national security bill to vote against the ban — making that Senator a ripe target for charges of being soft on terrorism.

The major gaming sites — that is, the legitimate companies regulated by British law and traded on the London Stock Exchange — announced over the weekend that they’ll cease offering service to U.S. customers the moment President Bush signs the bill. What does that mean? Well, it means the shady, fly-by-night sites that aren’t regulated or publicly traded will now thrive with U.S. customers. These gray and black-market sites are more prone to fraud, more likely to be involved in organized crime, and don’t include the child-protection measures the major sites have implemented.

For all the talk from Sen. Frist, Sen. Kyl, and Rep. Goodlatte about the dangers of this “unregulated” industry, the bill they’ve just passed will actually put the well-regulated gambling sites out of reach of U.S. customers. The end result? Online poker and other gaming sites will soon be even less regulated, more likely to induce children, and more likely to defraud U.S. consumers than ever before. Meanwhile, one of the most addictive forms of gambling — state lotteries — will soon make an en masse move online, thanks to an exemption in the bill that effectively creates an online monopoly for them.

In short, in an intrusive, big government effort to protect Americans from themselves, Congress has passed a futile, hypocritical, counter-productive, protectionist piece of legislation that will make it more difficult for millions of Americans to engage in an activity most participate in responsibly and moderately. For those people, the bill will probably work. But it’ll do little to prevent problem gambling, children’s access to gaming sites, or online fraud.

One can’t help but think that for Frist, none of that matters so long as the bill helps Republicans keep control of the Senate come November.

After taking flak for attaching the Internet gambling ban on a defense appropriations bill, Sen. Frist instead attached to a port security bill. At the last minute. No debate. They’ll vote on the bill at around midnight tonight, just before the good senators go home to campaign for their jobs. But note that a senator can’t vote against the ban without also voting against “port security.” And the GOP would of course use that vote as a cudgel to smack the heads of any Democratic senators smart enough to see the stupidity, hypocrisy, and excess of an Internet gambling ban.

Frist deserves heat for this. While he’s talking out of one side of his mouth about pork projects and transparency, he’s pulling crap like this, an intrusive, big government, paternalistic law aimed at policing behavior that’s none of the government’s damned business. And he’s pushing using undemocratic tickery that stifles debate, and doesn’t allow for an honest vote.

Jesus I hope the Republicans lose come November. Big.

Kudos to both the Washington Times and North Dakota state GOP Rep. Jim Kaspar for opposing the Republican Congress’s wrongheaded attempt to ban Internet gambling. There are at least a few folks on the right who still understand that there’s more to “limited government” than revoking the estate tax.

Sen. Frist is justifying his misguided, pre-election move on the grounds that it’s the government’s responsibility to protect us from bad behavior. Said Frist on the floor of the Senate, “Internet gambling threatens our families by bringing addictive behavior right into our living rooms.”

At risk of delving into libertarian cliches, even if you buy the dubious notion that protecting us from “addictive behavior” is a legitimate function of government, even the most well-intentioned of paternalistic legislation is, ultimately, enforced at the point of a gun. The people who break these laws are arrested. The people who resist arrest risk getting shot. The end of result of legislation like Frist’s is, absurdly, that government will eventually use violence against American citizens to “protect” them from violating Sen. Bill Frist’s morals.

Here’s a real-world example: At last week’s forum for my Overkill paper, I met Salvatore and Anita Culosi, parents of Sal Culosi, the Fairfax, Virginia optometrist shot and killed by a SWAT team earlier this year. The SWAT team came to Culosi’s home to enforce Virginia’s prohibition on gambling, ostensibly designed to “protect” Virginians like Sal Culosi from wagering their own money on games of chance. Culosi, an accomplished, single man who had the means to back up his wagers, had been placing bets on football games with friends. He’s dead because there are people in Virginia government who fail to see the absurdity of sending a military unit to arrest a man guilty of nothing more than spending his own money in ways some people find unseemly. That’s it.

Culosi’s family is still understandably devastated. Mrs. Culosi still can’t talk about her son without fighting back tears. I choked up several times just listening to her. I can’t imagine the rage that would come with losing an adult son to such a stupid and hypocritical policy. Horrible.

The Culosi outrage has been compounded by the insensitive and unaccountable behavior of many in Fairfax County government since the incident (are you reading, Justice Scalia?). It’s been seven months now, and the Fairfax County police department still refuses to cooperate with Culosi’s family.

Frist’s legislation is aimed primarily at financial institutions. But like all prohibitions on consensual crimes, it will fail. And so over the next several years we will inevitably see attempts by Congress to expand and strengthen the gambling prohibition, to the point where, as is now the law in Washington state, the prohibition will be aimed squarely at gamblers themselves, not just the companies that profit from gambling.

Perhaps Senators Frist and Kyl, and Reps. Leach and Goodlatte should sit down for a few minutes with Salvatore and Anita Culosi. It would at least help them understand the inevitable consequences of using the blunt instrument of government to impose their own values and morals on the rest of the country.

The Republicans have officially lost their shit:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is trying use a bill authorizing U.S. military operations, including in Iraq and Afghanistan, to prohibit people from using credit cards to settle Internet gambling debts.

Frist, R-Tenn., and his aides have been meeting with other lawmakers and officials in both the House and Senate to get the measure attached to a compromise Defense Department authorization bill, according to a Senate GOP leadership aide.

[...]

Frist, eyeing a 2008 presidential bid, recently discussed the online gambling measure in the politically important state of Iowa. He also called it a legislative priority in a recent speech on the Senate floor.

New depths in stupidity.

Bill Frist puts a ban on Internet gambling at the top of his list of priorities:

With little more than 20 working days left before the November mid-term elections, the Senate faces a crowded agenda including 13 different funding bills to keep the government functioning when its new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1.

Both the Senate and the House of Representatives have a tentative Oct. 9 adjournment date.

In its first session Tuesday since the August recess, Frist prioritized the appropriation bills, judicial nominee confirmations and halting Internet gambling as his top issues.

“Internet gambling threatens our families by bringing addictive behavior right into our living rooms,” Frist said in floor remarks.

[...]

To make room on the jammed Senate calendar, Weyforth said Frist hopes to bring up the bill for a vote “with very little debate” by limiting the time available for floor discussion of the legislation.

These buffoons really do want to control every facet of your life. I hope they get absolutely slaughtered come November.

I can only imagine the hysteria if online poker had been this woman’s habit:

A Long Island mom blew up to $6,000 a day on lottery tickets - an out-of-control addiction she fueled by embezzling $2.3 million from her bosses, authorities said yesterday.

By day, Annie Donnelly, 38, a bookkeeper and mother of three from Farmingville, wrote checks to herself and for cash at her medical office job.

By night, she would buy huge strips of $10 and $20 scratch-off tickets and thousands of dollars in lottery tickets on her way home - usually stopping at the same shop.

This line jumped out at me:

Gambling experts say lottery splurges are among the most common types of compulsive gambling.

And yet the states spend millions promoting their own lotteries, while sending SWAT teams after anyone who dares to challenge their monopoly over games of chance.

It’s sad to see Bill Simons cop the snobby “I liked poker before poker went mainstream” attitude after losing his $10,000 buy-in at the WSOP in all of two hours.

After a bad beat, Simmons now believes the game’s popularity has sapped it of its skill. He played his hand “perfectly,” he whines, and because he lost, he’s now convinced that the new poker, with all these youngsters and Internet hooligans, is nothing but luck.

Maybe. But I’m not sure Simmons’ experience in the WSOP bears that out. He had two pair after the flop — the top two pair, granted, with a K-10. That’s a good hand. And no one could blame him for going all-in. But it ain’t the nuts. And it certainly doesn’t prove that the game is nothing but luck. I certainly wouldn’t have played the hand the way Simmons did. I’d have made a big bet. And I’d certainly have called if my opponent had gone all-in. But unless I’m short-stacked, I’d never go all-in pre-turn with only two pair.

The truth is, Simmons lost the hand well before the flop. Right about here, in fact:

Meanwhile, a wild Internet qualifier was calling everybody, trash-talking, even showing his bluffs after he won. He reminded me of a football QB who keeps throwing deep; eventually, you switch to zone and start to pick off his passes. Basically, he was Jeff George.

And I wanted to pick him off.

Get it? This kid burrowed under Simmons’ skin. Got into his head. So Simmons tilted, decided knocking this guy was top priority, and went all-in the first time he got the kid to a face-off . It’s worth noting, too, that Simmons went all-in. It’s not as if he correctly called a bad bet.

The kid got lucky, yeah. But he also had a more-than-respectable hand — high pair with an ace kicker. Simmons wins that hand eight out of ten times. But that he lost it this time doesn’t prove the game is luck. Eighty percent isn’t a hundred percent. It isn’t even ninety. All Simmons’ bad beat proves that he if he valued staying in the tournament more than he valued teaching the young pup a lesson, he’d have played his stack with a little more caution.

I once went all-in with a nut flush, only to find a straight flush looking back at me. That was a bad beat. Of course, I lost about thirty bucks, not ten grand.

Via Ed Brayton, I see that fantasy football killer Chuck Humphrey is actually a semi-professional poker player, having earned some $40,000+ over the years.

I’m at a loss, then, to explain his lawsuit. Why would a poker fan want to bring down fantasy football? Is he merely attempting to point out the absurdity of the pending House legislation? Or is he envious that fantasy football won a carve-out from the ban that poker didn’t get? Put another way, is this an attempt to challenge anti-gambling legislation, or is it more, “if I can’t have fun, then I’ll make sure nobody can?”

If it’s the latter, Chuck Humprhey has just surpassed Phil Hellmuth as my “least favorite person to ever have played a game of professional poker.”

I’ve been hanging out with kids all weekend. My insult engine is stuck on idle. But I do wish a non-fatal, but particularly embarassing venereal disease upon him. Here’s why:

I have filed a Complaint in a lawsuit against The Walt Disney Company, Vulcan, Inc. and Viacom Inc. seeking to recover money lost by players in the fantasy sports leagues sponsored and operated by various subsidiaries of those companies.

Players pay $1-1/2 Billion dollars a year to play in these leagues, which the operators contend do not violate most state anti-gambling laws because they involve contests of skill. However, the contests are games of chance because outcome is primarily determined based on the ever-present human element involved.

You can read more about Chuck Humphrey’s assface lawsuit here. Me, I hope he loses his sense of taste. In a just world, stupid people like Chuck Humprhey would never get to taste pie. I hate you, Chuck Humphrey.

Two weeks ago marked six months since a SWAT team shot and killed Fairfax optometrist Sal Culosi on a gambling raid. To date, there has been no accountability on the part of Fairfaix officials. Culosi’s family writes:

We have not updated this site in the last three months in anticipation of a response from Chief Rohrer. We were hopeful that sheer decency would mandate that Chief Rohrer honor Supervisor Connolly’s request to respond to us “with an estimation of the time for the release of a report on the death of [our] son.” To date Chief Rohrer has failed to comply with this request.

This failure by Chief Rohrer is totally consistent with FCPD’s apparent “closed door” policy of not sharing any information with the public and makes us wonder if Chief Rohrer works for the Board of Supervisors or if the Board and Supervisor Connolly work for Chief Rohrer. If I were Mr. Connolly, I would want and expect compliance with my directive and I would want it now.

. . . we understand that the FCPD has already concluded their Internal Affairs investigation but we have not received any information on their findings. We can only speculate that the delay in any response from the FCPD is connected to their trepidation that the ongoing investigation by the FBI may connect the dots differently than their “in house” investigation of themselves.

[...]

Any competent undercover detective who engaged our son would have known him to be both a non-threatening and non-violent person. Sal had no history of violence, did not own a weapon, and was unarmed and cooperative at the time of the killing.

Sadly, if this case procedes like others I’ve researched, the Culosi’s will get a monetary award, but none of the officers will be disciplined, and there will be very little in the way of real reform.

If you’re in the mood for irony, have a look at this page. It’s the tribute page for Officer Salvatore Embarrato, Sal Culosi’s uncle, and the man after whom he was named. Embarrato was killed in a traffic accident while on duty in 1961.

Story here.

I have a feeling Antigua was only the first of many countries that will challenge the U.S. government’s continuing efforts to impose its morality on the rest of the world.