Fristed!

Congratulations, Senator Frist. You did it. You got your anti-online gambling legislation enacted. You should be quite proud that you have effectively taken away freedoms of United States citizens. Kudos!

Late Friday night, Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, not by debating all the issues and possibilities surrounding online gambling, but, rather by attaching the legislation to the Safe Port Act. So, a bill whose goal is, “…to improve maritime and cargo security…” includes anti-online gambling language. Makes sense.

In a nutshell, the bill outlaws financial institutions from processing transactions to and from online gambling companies. Additionally, online gambling companies are not allowed to accept any money whatsoever, in any form, from US players. Individual players are not criminalized if they do continue to play poker online.

The bill passed by a voice vote in the Senate and by an almost unanimous vote in the House. This is not because all the legislators want to ban online gambling, it’s just that it was attached to the Safe Port Act. People were not going to vote against the Safe Port Act. After all, doing so would be "un-American." On top of that, the Congressional session was coming to an end and everyone just wanted to go home to start campaigning. Frist chose a perfect time to add irrelevant legislation to a security bill.

As we said in an earlier story, this was simply a political move by Frist and others who supported the elimination of online gambling. By doing this, they can pander to the religious conservative voter base so they can possibly win the upcoming elections. There was no discussion of whether or not this was what the American public wanted. There was no discussion of possibly legalizing and regulating online gambling. There was no study done to see what the industry was all about. It was simply dirty politics. The only people who were represented in the hallowed halls of the US government were the lawmakers themselves.

The entire Safe Port Act can be found here:

http://www.rules.house.gov/109_2nd/text/hr4954cr/hr49543_portscr.pdf

Originally published October 2, 2006