BrianGarst.com

Finally, there is an issue for which the Obama administration has not reflexively sided with centralized government and limits on freedom:

A Justice Department opinion dated September and made public on Friday reversed decades of previous policy that included civil and criminal charges against operators of some of the most popular online poker sites.

Until now, the department held that online gambling in all forms was illegal under the Wire Act of 1961, which bars wagers via telecommunications that cross state lines or international borders.

The new interpretation, by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, said the Wire Act applies only to bets on a “sporting event or contest,” not to a state’s use of the Internet to sell lottery tickets to adults within its borders or abroad.

…But the department’s conclusion would eliminate “almost every federal anti-gambling law that could apply to gaming that is legal under state laws,” Rose wrote on his blog at www.gamblingandthelaw.com.If a state legalized intra-state games such as poker, as Nevada and the District of Columbia have done, “there is simply no federal law that could apply” against their operators, he said.

No comment yet from the despicable, odious weasel Preet Bharara, whose ongoing crusade against human freedom has destroyed the once booming online poker industry in the U.S.

poker