Remember the good old days when being a conservative meant arguing that government should stay out of peoples lives? Those days are long gone.
On Tuesday, the House plans to vote on a bill that would ban credit cards for paying online bets and could padlock gambling Web sites. The legislation would clarify existing law to spell out that it is illegal to gamble online.
To enforce that ban, the bill would prohibit credit cards and other payment forms, such as electronic transfers, from being used to settle online wagers. It also would give law enforcement officials the authority to work with Internet providers to block access to gambling Web sites.
And of course, it's the usual "family values" suspects who are behind this.
"If you're going to support legislation that is supposed to 'prohibit gambling,' you should not have carve-outs," said Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the conservative Traditional Values Coalition.
Other conservative and antigambling groups are supporting the legislation, sponsored by Reps. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and Jim Leach, R-Iowa.
John Kindt, a business professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who has studied the issue, calls the Internet "the crack cocaine" of gambling.
"There are no needle marks. There's no alcohol on the breath. You just click the mouse and lose your house," he said.
I wonder if Kindt has any statistical data on the number of people who lost their house versus, say, the number who lose their life due to gun violence?
Whatever happened to personal responsibility?
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