Before I get started, I want to say that I am not telling people who don’t want to bet on football games to all of the sudden go out and start betting their hard earned money, I am not endorsing any particular casino nor am I endorsing any gaming website of any kind; what I will be doing in this article is stating my opinion on the hypocrisy and anti-freedom of choice decisions made by our United States Congress in banning Internet gaming, which, of course, includes sports wagering.

I have been dumbfounded by the ban since it went into effect in 2006. For those do not know, it was attached to the Safe Port Act on the last day of the congressional session for 2006 and is oddly treated kind of like an “oh by the way” thing.

The act is really all about combating terrorism—it really doesn’t have a lot to do with gambling at all—until page 213 they start talking about Internet gaming. More specifically the act talks about the funding of U.S. customer accounts at Internet gaming sites and there in lies the rub.

While the law does not make it illegal for U.S. citizens to use internet gaming sites it makes it illegal for U.S. citizens to directly fund these accounts.

Of course, it doesn’t take the smart people too long to figure out ways around that, but, it doesn’t mean that it makes it a simple process either, therefore removing a large segment of the U.S. populations right to freedom of choice.

Most U.S. banks at this point have blocked their users credit and debit cards for use with sites associated with online gaming; these cards were by far the easiest and most common way to fund accounts.

So at this point, some readers of this article who may have stumbled upon it because they Googled something and this came up or they were referred to it by a friend who regularly reads my football stuff might say: “Well that’s good because gambling is bad” or they may agree with congress who talks in the bill about many credit card collection proceedings occurring because of Internet gambling debts.

You know what, I agree with them in this regard and say that if Internet gambling is truly the primary reason for debt collection then they have a valid point, but, I just don’t believe it is the only major reason.

I also strongly believe that people who gamble more than recreationally may even have a problem for which they should get help for.

However, I do not agree with several things.

Firstly I am going to call out many of the U.S. congressmen particularly those who attended some of the more prominent schools in the Ivy League as those schools were built largely with money raised by lotteries and therefore gambling money.

If these congressmen voted to approve the act what they are saying that as long as the proceeds of the gambling directly benefit them then it is O.K.; I can only hope that others can see that it isn’t.

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