The following appeared in the September 13, 2006 edition of the Ventura County Star by Colleen Cason.

Poker players are refusing to fold to lawmakers who want to stop them from playing Texas hold 'em or five-card stud on the Internet.

To show our U.S. senators they aren't a bunch of jokers, these cyber sports held a protest march on Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.

Well, actually they phoned it in. A Web site for online poker devotees, http://www.Pocketfives.com, encouraged its 18,500 members to tell their elected officials what they think of a bill that would shut down Internet poker rooms just as legislation of an earlier era outlawed bookie joints.

The House of Representatives passed its version of the online-gaming ban in July. That measure would make it illegal for U.S. banks and credit card issuers to deal with an estimated 2,300 offshore gambling dot-coms.

The Senate must pass its bill and the president must sign it if the ban is to go into effect. Backers, such as Majority Leader Bill Frist, believe that it will stop people from falling into addictive behavior in their own living rooms.

Try to imagine this scene: The husband is hunched over the PC as his wife pays the family bills.

"So, Honey, what are you doing over there?" she asks.

"Nothing, Dear, just betting our house against two deuces," he replies.

Yeah, like that is going to happen. I'll wager most compulsive gamblers do their jonseing in a casino, not in the family room.

Online gaming has hit the jackpot, no doubt about that. More than $15 billion will be spent by cyber gamblers of all sorts this year, according to estimates by Christiansen Capital Advisors, a research firm for the gaming industry. By 2010, the firm projects that it will boom into a $25 billion industry. Half of this planet's estimated 23 million online poker players live in the United States.

Dan Cypra of http://www.Pocketfives.com — a leader in the effort to stop the legislation — believes that government shouldn't try to beat them. Instead, they should join in the game.

A study paid for by the Poker Players Alliance suggests that the stakes are high for the U.S. Treasury. The government coffers could gain $3.3 billion each year from income taxes and fees if online poker was regulated. The vast majority of players, Cypra believes, are small-timers with 100 bucks to blow. They learn the game anonymously online before they move up to casino matches, where they must play challengers face to face.

Online poker advocates may just have an ace in the hole this legislative season. They could easily capitalize on the fact that Congress does not seem to have its mind on its own game.

Not once in the past year have I heard anyone say he is losing sleep over some guy trying to draw to an inside straight somewhere out there in cyberspace. Yet, most days I hear people worry that Social Security might not be there when they are ready to retire, after they have paid into it all their working lives.

Despite the fact that their own party's president identified Social Security as teetering on the edge of crisis, the Republican-majority Congress has passed zero legislation to save the system.

And while rarely do I go anywhere when someone does not bring up illegal immigration and the estimated 12 million undocumented people living in this country, the Senate cannot seem to get its act together on immigration reform.

The House has passed a bill, which most Americans do not favor. This gives the Senate an opportunity to craft legislation more in keeping with the fact that most Americans favor at least some kind of guest worker program.

But with the session about ready to time out, legislation to fix these problems seems to be lost in the shuffle.

It's long past time for some serious buy-in on these issues by our elected officials on Capitol Hill.

Ante up, ladies and gentlemen.