In a stunning setback, voters in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, have decided they don’t want any part of a Penn National Gaming slot parlor. By a very wide margin, they nixed the project, thereby reducing the field of competitors to three: Raynham Park, Cordish Gaming and Rush Street Gaming. It’s not been a good year for Penn, if we go back to its electoral defeat in Maryland last November. It’s subsequently had its Sioux City license taken away (or not renewed, more precisely) and been passed over for the Springfield, Mass., casino contract that went to MGM Resorts International. Penn says it will abide by the will of the Tewksbury electorate, which is mighty big of them: It’s not like CEO Peter Carlino (left) has much choice in the matter. The people have spoken and Carlino lost. If he can find another host community by Sept. 1, Penn could still get into Massachusetts, but the prospect is looking bleak, unless … he makes a play for the southeastern region, where no operator of consequence has bid.
Can you believe that a construction executive based in Boston would be unaware his company did work for Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun. That’s the fish story an anti-casino Beantown mayoral candidate would have you swallow. Suffolk Downs workers accuse Peter Walczak of wanting to have it both ways and it doesn’t look like he’s got a leg to stand on, despite his protestations to the contrary.
Here’s a howdy-do, as they say in the collected works of Gilbert & Sullivan. A new, anti-gambling movie,Runner Runner, depicts Ben Affleck as an evil online-casino boss (in Tinseltown is there any other kind?) based 
in Costa Rica. He is confronted by outraged punter Justin Timberlake. Not a plot that will have you on the edge of your seats, I would imagine. However, both the American Gaming Association and industry leaders like MGM’s Jim Murren (left) are trying to use fiction to push fact. That is to say, they hope the movie will motivate Congress to legalize and regulate Internet gambling. Considering years of congressional lethargy, I doubt that solons will spring into Timberlake-like action. What’s more interesting is that Big Gaming is so keen on federal regulation because it is certain to come with federal taxation, as night follows day. But that’s a tradeoff that the industry clearly has chosen to make.
Stranger still is a saga emerging out of Oregon where Princess Irina Walker, of the Romanian monarchy 
in exile, and her husband have been busted for running a cockfighting operation. Princess Irina is the daughter of king and sometime chicken farmer Michael I, late of the throne of Romania. Judging by The Associated Press‘ coverage, local authorities were more outraged that the Walkers were serving food and liquor than by the cockfighting. Rest assured, though, the duo is being charged with violating the Animal Welfare Act, as well as for illegal gambling. The cops seized firearms and what they think is meth. (How can they be unsure?) As if this whole sordid story weren’t strange enough, the roosters were supposedly on performance-enhancing drugs — and you thought only Lance Armstrong, Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds did that sort of thing. Beneath all the levity it’s incredibly sad. My wife and I rescued a rooster that appeared to have been maimed through cockfighting and it’s no laughing matter.
If you had been in Alabama and said, “Penn says it will abide by the will of the Tewksbury electorate, which is mighty white of it,” you would have Jessie Jackson on you in a flash. That is considered a racial comment down here. I guess you can get a pass in Nevada. Now the idea of meth for cockfighting roosters is new. Hope our backwoods boys don’t hear of that.