Our government has arrested yet another executive from an online gaming company, this time Peter Dicks, chairman of the board of Sportingbet, a British company. Jacob Sullum, writing at Reason.com, captured this whole situation perfectly a few weeks ago:
If an executive of a U.S. media company were arrested in Beijing for violating a Chinese law against "subversive" online speech, or in Tehran for creating "indecent" Web content viewed by Iranians, Americans would ask what right these countries have to impose their illiberal policies on us. Sadly, our government is giving people in other countries good cause to wonder the same thing about the United States.
This whole thing is becoming insane. I've reached the point where, for the first time in my life, I'm ready to vote for one of the major parties. I'm thinking seriously about voting Democratic this fall and in 2008, regardless of who is actually running, simply because the constituent groups that the Democrats have to please are less frightening to me than the constituent groups the Republicans have to please.
6 comments:
This whole thing pisses me off. A lot. I enjoy gambling. I think betting on sports makes an otherwise meaningless sporting event much more entertaining. I like playing poker. I don't live near a casino which makes it hard to participate in these activities that I enjoy. It's pretty much bullshit soon I won't be able to do this because there is some stigma that says gambling is immoral. It's not my fault that there are people who can't control there own lives and gamble there childs college fund away. Not to sound calous and umsympathetic but why should this be taken away from me because someone else has a problem. Gambling isn't herion.
I agree man. There are actually 2 seperate steps to this, each of which is totally fucked up.
First these Puritan assholes decide that gambling is immoral or wrong or whatever. That is stupid, but fine. They can think whatever they want for whatever retarded reasons.
But they go the next step and decide that they should impose their backwards morals onto everyone else. I can live with dirty looks from people who think my life is immoral, but it is an outrage that they go so far as to force other people to live by their standards.
voting usually does seem like simply choosing the lesser of two evils. we should all do it nonetheless.
I would hope that you all support the legalization of currently illegal drugs based on your arguments, then.
i probably do, at least in some form. our current system is terrible. i had a thread with pete where we started discussing this. i guess i'll try to find it.
here
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=10328141&postID=114448389505288987
So you did, interesting conversation. What amazed me about the illegalization (sorry) of drugs is that it was originally spurned as being unconstitutional, that it was an individual's personal freedom to ingest whatever that person wanted, and it was an invasion of privacy to pass legislation that would prevent the exercise of such a right. It wasn't until some Congressman figured out a way to wrap antidrug legislation around tax law that it could become clandenstine enough to pass into law. And since, from that society's morality has been drawn. Makes me say "motherfucker."
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