Happy Easter from everyone at PocketFives. We hope our entire community is having a wonderful, relaxing day. All of the restaurants around this author’s house are closed, so I decided I’d get a jump-start on work with several news articles that have been piling up over the weekend. The first item on the agenda: Harry Reid (pictured).

On Friday, Vegas Inc.published an article hinting that jamming through the Sheldon Adelson-backed Restoring America’s Wire Act, or RAWA, could be Reid’s last hoorah. Reid announced he’s not seeking reelection in 2016, so he could be somewhat of a wild card in the next year-and-a-half, potentially championing issues he’s genuinely concerned about.

Vegas Inc. explained, “Asked in a radio interview last week about a proposed ban in Congress, Reid said ‘online gaming is not good for our country,’ but he thought online poker would be good for Nevada. If the House of Representatives were to pass the ban, Reid said, the Senate would ‘give it a good hard try.'”

Reid reiterated his point, later saying in the interview, “We will see what the legislation does; we will see what the House does, but I think for the state of Nevada online gaming is not the direction we should go.” Nevada has regulated online poker and just launched shared liquidity with Delaware.

Last December, Reid spouted off lingo reminiscent of Adelson (pictured) in an article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, saying, “I think the proliferation of gambling on the internet is not good for our country. I think it is an invitation to crime. I think it is hard to control for crime when you’ve got brick-and-mortar places, let alone something up in the sky someplace, and it is very bad for children.”

Yes, Reid said the internet was “something up in the sky someplace.” We can’t make this stuff up.

Poker Players Alliance Executive Director John Pappas said of Reid, “A top-down federal mandate that denies states the ability to protect its citizens is not something Congressional legacies are made of, and I cannot imagine that Senator Reid would make this a priority in his final days in office.”

We are fresh off a sham internet gambling hearinglast month that was little more than two hours of fear-mongering by uninformed witnesses save Parry Aftab. We know that a mark-up of RAWA is expected, which when coupled with Reid’s support and Adeson’s bottomless pockets could mean an abrupt end to regulated internet gambling in the US in 2015 or 2016.

We’ll keep you posted on the latest poker legislation news right here on PocketFives.

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