Jack Abramoff Must Be Smiling…

Posted on Jul 11, 2006

... Because the House is considering an anti-gambling bill that would include an exemption for horse racing and intrastate lotteries. The disgraced lobbyist worked to ensure the latter in a bill several years ago.

Gambling is bad, bad, bad. Unless it’s on horsies or lotteries. Then it’s OK.

Rep. Shelley Berkley via AMERICAblog:

When the House considers the poorly-named Internet Gambling Prohibition and Enforcement Act tomorrow, I will offer an amendment to eliminate the special exemptions contained in the bill. Regardless of your position on the issue, there is no reason for Congress to pick and choose which types of gaming should be exempted from what is being described as a ban on Internet gaming.

The bill’s advocates proclaim the immorality of online gaming and shout that it will destroy our society - unless you are betting on horse races. They assert that the bill is neutral on the subject of interstate online pari-mutuel betting. But there is no getting around the fact that this bill very clearly and specifically states that online betting on horseracing is not prohibited.

The bill also includes another hypocritical exemption - for intrastate lotteries. This is highly ironic because this exemption is exactly what the notorious felon Jack Abramoff wanted when he reportedly orchestrated the defeat of a similar bill several years ago because it had no exemption for lotteries. Mr. Abramoff must be smiling about this turn of events.

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