Free Republic

Two Republican senators running for president reintroduced a bill Wednesday that would effectively ban Internet poker and other forms of online gambling—legislation that has long been championed by casino magnate and GOP mega-donor Sheldon Adelson. Both Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio joined a handful of Republicans and one Democrat in reviving the Restoration of America's Wire Act, a measure that proponents say would "restore" the proper interpretation of a decades-old federal ban on some gambling operations by expanding it to include Internet gambling.

In February, an attack ad titled "Don’t Let the Games Begin" started popping up in online gambling forums. The ad opens on two shadows shaking hands in a dark city alley. We see a distraught mother at her laptop, a young child at a computer in a dim bedroom, police cars with sirens. A narrator with a scaly voice comes on. "An established al-Qaeda poker network could extract enough untraceable money from the United States in just a few days to fund several 9/11-sized attacks," he says. "Say no to internet gambling."The message is clear: internet gambling will fund terrorism...

We need to have a debate about whether we really want a full casino attached to every smartphone in America. With the wave of the executive branch magic wand, unfettered Internet gambling could soon be imposed on all 50 states. When the Department of Justice (DOJ) unilaterally reinterpreted the 1961 Wire Act in December 2011, the DOJ circumvented the democratic process and opened the door for a massive policy change absent any significant public debate. We unequivocally oppose the legalization of online gaming.

As states like New Jersey, where it is now legal, and Massachusetts, where there is a move to legalize online gaming, Adelson is convinced that online gambling competes with his brick-and-mortar poker rooms. To this end, he is calling on the Congress, and specifically his Republican friends, to outlaw his competition. The ask has put Republicans in a precarious situation where they are forced to choose between philosophical principles, like federalism, and their opposition to crony capitalism against the obligation to hear out and support Adelson. Texas Gov. J. Richard “Rick” Perry, for instance, was once one of the leading...

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that “Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz is preparing to introduce a bill that would restore the pre-2011 federal ban on Internet gaming, a spokeswoman confirmed on Wednesday. It would join a similar bill to be sponsored in the Senate by GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.” “The goals of the Graham-Chaffetz legislation,” the Review-Journal continues, “are consistent with the highly publicized campaign by billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson to outlaw Internet gambling on moral grounds.”

Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada and Gov. Jack Markell of Delaware signed an agreement Tuesday that would allow poker players from both states to participate in a combined player pool -- potentially the first step in recreating a true American online poker market. The legislation allows the two states, which currently offer limited potential player pools, the ability to create a larger marketplace and add to the player liquidity that online poker sites rely on for continued success.

My 25 year son was making a nice living playing online poker from the home in Florida that he owns. Then on April 15, 2011, Eric Holder shut the online poker activity within the U.S. Many in my sons's field are traveling to Rosario, Mexico (20 minutes south of Tijuana), opening bank accounts in Mexico and paying inexpensive rate to live there and play online for weeks at a time. All to get past the Holder U.S. blockage. The rates are so low there right now because the tourism is virtually dried up from high crime and bad press. I...

Strip poker is one of Attorney General Eric Holder’s favorite games. As in, he evidently enjoys stripping online poker entrepreneurs of their Fourth Amendment rights. Holder is the head of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), which is currently stripping online gaming entrepreneurs of their intellectual property rights. Technically, online gambling has never been declared “illegal” in the U.S. and yet the DOJ is citing a hazy law in order to allege that online gambling is a crime. On Monday, July 2, the federal government arrested Los Angeles native Ray Bitar as he landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport...

When you've turned nothing into something once already, you tend to feel like you can do it again. There's faith your luck will turn. Perhaps it's delusion. But for a professional poker player, self-confidence is essential. So it is for Walter Wright, who now finds himself in Costa Rica. He left his wife and two children behind to redeem their failing finances and faltering marriage by doing something that's now illegal in the United States—playing poker online. Wright's life began to change in 2005, when he followed his then-girlfriend from New Orleans to Virginia, where she was beginning law school...

Thousands of campaign donations received by U.S. Rep. Barney Frank from three Full Tilt Poker stars allegedly involved in a Ponzi scheme to defraud online players will be set aside to compensate victims, according to Harry Gural, Frank’s spokesman. Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara yesterday alleged that Full Tilt took money from players and paid out more than $440 million to board members and owners, including at least three men, Howard Lederer, Rafael Furst and Craig Ferguson, who have donated to Frank’s election campaign. Frank (D-Newton) has been one of the most vocal congressional supporters of legalizing online gaming and...

Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson, Rafe Furst, Ray Bitar Allegedly Defrauded Players out of $440 Million. Forbes is reporting that on Tuesday morning the U.S. Justice Department accused Full Tilt Poker’s board members Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson, and Rafe Furst of working with CEO Ray Bitar to defraud poker players out of more than $440 million over the past four years. After Tuesday’s amendments to April’s original indictment swept more names from the beleaguered site into the thick of legal trouble, Manhattan’s U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement that “Full Tilt was not a legitimate poker company, but a...

It’s amazing how a person’s media profile can change in just a year. Joe Barton has done a complete 180 in the eyes of many Americans, particularly poker players. If you remember, it was just 53 weeks ago the Texas Republican stood up at the congressional hearings investigating the BP oil spill and environmental disaster and Joe Barton apologized to British Petroleum for having to sit and answer for their destruction of the US Gulf Coast. Fast forward to Friday and Joe Barton is riding high among the poker playing public after he released his Internet Gambling Prohibition, Poker Consumer...

Last week, while many people reported their income to the Internal Revenue Service, others suddenly found their source of income shut off. On a day now known among online poker players as “Black Friday,” the Department of Justice did us Americans the favor of saving us from ourselves by shutting down the three most popular and trusted online poker platforms. Not only did the department seize the three domain names, it also froze 77 accounts around the world and charged the founders of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker, among others. What’s there crime? While the charges very carefully...

The founders of the three largest online poker sites were indicted by the FBI on Friday in what could serve as a death blow to the thriving industry. Eleven executives at PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker were charged with bank fraud and money laundering in an indictment unsealed in a Manhattan court. Two of the executives were arrested on Friday morning in Utah and Nevada. Federal agents are searching for the others. Prosecutors are seeking to immediately shut down the sites and to eventually send the executives to jail and to recover $3 billion from the companies. By...

Harry Reid must be a political opportunist — excuse me, optimist. Where others see defeat, Reid sees a chance to win a hand or two for his casino backers in Nevada. Politico reports that Reid will attempt to attach a rider onto the Senate version of the tax deal reached by Barack Obama and Republicans on Capitol Hill to legalize online poker in the US, with provisions that give gaming corporations a big head start: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is trying to use the tax cut package President Barack Obama brokered with Republicans to legalize online poker, POLITICO has...

A federal grand jury in Manhattan is investigating one of the largest internet poker sites serving US gamblers and could bring indictments against some of the world's best known professional players, according to people familiar with the case and a subpoena issued to a witness this week. The probe is aimed at Full Tilt Poker and individuals including Chris Ferguson and Howard Lederer, champion gamblers who are among those accused of controlling the company in a Los Angeles civil lawsuit filed last year. Online gambling is illegal in the US and according to the subpoena the investigation is examining whether...

<p>WASHINGTON — Howard Lederer is a professional poker player, not a gambler. If Congress will acknowledge this distinction, it will rectify one of its recent mistakes.</p> <p>In 2006, Congress, cloaking cunning with moralizing, effectively outlawed Internet gambling by making it illegal for banks or credit card companies to process payments to online gambling operations. This was more than moral pork for social conservatives. It also blocked online competitors from poaching gamblers from the nation’s most aggressive promoters of gambling — state governments. They are increasingly addicted to revenues raised by lotteries and from taxation of other legal gambling. The law exempted Internet state lotteries and two powerful and vocal interests — online betting on horse racing and some fantasy sports betting online.</p>

In what is thought to be the first comprehensive, empirical study of online-gambling behaviors, Harvard Medical School's Division of Addictions characterizes a majority of online gamblers' behavior as "moderate," concluding that its findings do not support previously-made claims that online gambling has "an inherent propensity" to cause problem or "excessive" gambling. The study, "Assessing the Playing Field: A Prospective Longitudinal Study of Internet Sports Gambling Behavior," was conducted with the support of the Austrian online-betting group Bwin in order to guide the company in its efforts to implement and promote responsible gambling. As its authors explain, the study responds to...

The Skill Game Protection Act Defines Poker as a Skill GameA Florida politician who believes poker should be considered a game of skill has introduced a bill that would allow people to play online poker legally with government protection in the United States. The Skill Game Protection Act had been introduced by Representative Robert Wexler (D-Fla.). The bill would make several games, including poker, mah-jongg, bridge, and chess, exempt from current laws aimed against online gambling. Basically, the bill aims to clarify which games are skill games and which games are not. The bill specifically calls poker a game of...

I like this Al D'Amato fellow already. Tell you why: He understands the value of a poker face. Take the announcement this week that D'Amato is taking a "leadership position" with the Poker Players Alliance, a group you've never heard of that nevertheless is committed to doing God's work by protecting the rights of card players everywhere to lose money online. At one point while talking about his new challenge in life with a reporter for the New York Times, D'Amato, the former Republican senator from New York, railed against the law passed last year that makes it extremely difficult...