GOP Bets Big on Internet Gambling Ban

At a time of international turmoil, with daily reports of violence from Iraq, nuclear war threatened from North Korea, and reports of the Taliban gaining strength in Afghanistan, Congress has chosen to take decisive action on the key issue of our time: internet gambling. That's right, the morality police are back, and this time they've got online gambling in their sights. And exemptions for horse racing and interstate lotteries remained in the bill despite the obvious hypocrisy inherent in them. I suppose the bible says ponies are OK?

The U.S. House on Tuesday approved a Republican-written bill to crack down on Internet gambling, in what critics said was an election-year appeal to the party's conservative base.

The House voted 317-93 to impose a ban on most forms of Internet gambling by making it illegal for banks and credit card companies to make payments to online gambling sites. Internet gambling generates some $12 billion annually worldwide, half from American gamblers.

The bill exempted horse racing and lotteries from the ban.

"This is a scourge on our society. It causes innumerable problems," Republican Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, one of the bill's sponsors, said on the House floor before the vote.
That's right! Just like flag burning! And gay marriage! And not having "under God" in the pledge of allegiance! Have I forgotten any of the other idiotic election year issues that the Republican majority has crammed down our throats? Barney Frank (D-MA) succinctly sums up the major philosophical objection to the bill:

Democrat Barney Frank of Massachusetts said he thought the bill was "outrageous."

"If people want to do something, and it doesn't hurt anybody else, we ought to mind our own business," Frank said on Monday. "This is a bill to tell adults not to do something because people in this body disapprove of what they do."
I thought that was the whole idea behind libertarianism, which is supposed to be a driving force in the Republican party. I guess not, seeing as how easily the bill passed (though there were likely more than a few spineless Dems in the mix, given the overwhelming majority vote the bill received.)

Pay attention Republicans, this is your party at work. Not the party of liberty, or of an "ownership society" (that tells you how you can and can't enjoy your free time and money), or the party that was going to free Washington from special interest groups, but the party that panders to a moralizing bunch of crusaders who want to turn the country into a Christian taliban piece by piece. Well, that is, unless another interested group lobbies hard enough to get an exemption for themselves. The modern GOP: Christian extremist morality, with exceptions available for a price.

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