Anybody see the 60 minutes piece about online gambling tonight? <READMORE>

I'm getting really tired of politicians trying to put me out of a job as a professional poker player and trying to legislate their moral and religious codes, and Senator John Kyl is a perfect example. Senator Kyl's religion and his moral beliefs cause him to believe that my job should be illegal and I should not be allowed to do it. You won't be surprised to find that this makes me a little grumpy.

<READMORE>If you put your religious beliefs above the freedom of your country and the constitution that guarantees those freedoms then I can't argue with your choice. It's a matter of priority and you have found something that is mpore important to you than your country and you are willing to compromise the country for it. If I thought making gambling illegal would get me into heaven for eternity I might make the same choice. The thing is I don't believe that.

What I see is the religious right is trying to undermine the freedoms of American citizens for their own personal agenda. Legislating religion doesn't work in the middle east, and legislating morality didn't work during prohibition. Whether they do it for religious or moral reasons, or simply for votes, it is unamerican to try to limit other people's freedoms because of your personal beliefs.

I sent Senator Kyl an email after I saw the piece on 60 minutes and I encourage you all to do the same, especially if you are in his district in Arizona. Here's the email and I will publish his response here in the blog if I recieve one, though at best I expect a form letter. Here's the letter I submitted.

"Mr. Kyl,

After seeing your comments on 60 minutes I thought you might be interested in my story. I am from Minnesota so I cannot vote against you, but my blog has many thousands of readers and I can certainly help launch a large campaign to get aRizona voters to vote you out of office.

Why would I want to invest so much time in a politician a thousand miles away? Because I play poker online for a living and you want to take my job away from me. If you and your fellow conservatives manage to make it impossible for me to do my job you can rest assured many of us will tell everyone who will listen that you cost us our jobs and gave them to people overseas.

If a citizen of another country can do my job but I am not allowed to do so, I am guessing much of the country will begin to see things my way.

Is it that you thinnk you know better than I do and you are protecting me from my own potential gambling problem? Do you think the government needs to protect me because I can't make the decision to gamble on my own? That doesn't sound like the "small government" Republican party platform to me.

Maybe it isn't about the consumer at all. Maybe you are thinking about companies in the U.S. and for some reason you think anti-gambling laws would be good for them. Of course in a ten billion dollar industry you are attempting to cripple U.S. companies and give a huge competitive advantage to companies overseas, so that doesn't seem to be a likely reason.

So I must ask you Senator Kyl, what is the reason for your crusade against online gambling? Why do you want so badly to leave thousands of Americans jobless? Why do you want a ten billion dollar industry to be inaccessible to American companies? Will you be happy once I must openly break the law or be jobless?

I look forward to your response and I will be publishing this letter in my blog, which has thousands readers and we will all be eagerly awaiting your response."

You can contact Senator Kyl here -

http://kyl.senate.gov/contact.cfm

Let him know how you feel about his anti-gambling stance and encourage him to respond to my email so we can all see what he has to say for himself.
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