In his mania to ban Internet gaming, Sheldon Adelson has let the worst of anti-gambling zealots to slither into bed with him. Dr. James Dobson-founded Focus on the Family has gotten behind 
Rep. Jason Chaffetz‘s faltering bill. So-called “social liberal” Adelson is now making common cause with conservative groups whose primary reason for existing is to outlaw abortion and extirpate gay marriage. If you’re known by the company you keep, Adelson’s allied himself with some of the worst of the anti-gambling crowd, all because he fears the Internet and doesn’t want his competitors capitalizing on it.
“Certainly any decision to undermine this law, and unleash Internet gambling on our country, should not be left to a lawyer burrowed in the Justice Department,” huffed Let Freedom Ring President Colin Hanna. National Fraternal Order of Police President President Chuck Canterbury fired back, saying, “A federal prohibition of online gaming would make our communities less safe, not more so.” Fortunately, at this point Adelson is being outspent by the Poker Players Alliance and Caesars Entertainment. I wonder how he feels about cozying up to right-wing interest groups whose only use for him is as a cash box.
* Speaking of Capitol Hill troglodytes, Rep. Trent Franks (R, below) has seen his “Keep the Promise” bill targeting the Tohono O’odham 
tribe sent into legislative limbo. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D) outmaneuvered Franks, persuading Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R) to remove the bill from the “suspension calendar,” a legislative device that the Arizona Daily Star describes as “a process that would have bypassed floor debate and allowed a vote without actually putting representatives on record.” (It’s an aptly sleazy procedure for enacting a bill whose intent is to screw over a single Native American tribe.)
At best, though, Grijalva can only hope to temporarily stymie the bill, which has overwhelming support in the House of Representatives but routinely goes to the Senate to die, even 
though Sens. John McCain (R) and Jeff Flake (R) have gotten a parallel version voted out of committee. The bill is casino opponents’ only hope, the federal courts having repeatedly ruled in the tribes’ favor, arguing that whether or not voters thought they were voting for a moratorium on casino development in the Glendale area in 2002, the Tohono O’odham are within the letter of the law.
* Players of the online social game Game of War: Fire Age will be relieved to know that it has been ruled not to be Internet gambling. District Judge James Bredar dismissed a claim by Mia Mason against manufacturer Machine Zone. Mason was feeling gamer’s remorse after spending $100 on digital currency — which lets you wager for cyber-money and minerals. In a droll ruling, Bredar wrote that he did not want to place himself in “the unenviable position of pricing the conversion from virtual gold and chips to virtual wood and rock. Such whimsical undertaking may the imaginations of children and ardent game enthusiasts, but it can have no place in federal court.” Game over.
