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News-Sentinel.com Your Town. Your Voice.
Opening Arguments

Buildings of cards

I would like to thank the "key legislators" who are watching out for me and really seem to care about my well-being:

Concerned about new casinos that could be more like buildings than boats, several key legislators want to review whether state regulators are stretching what Indiana's gambling law allows.

House Speaker Pat Bauer, D-South Bend, said legislators will make changes if necessary to ensure the Indiana Gaming Commission can't authorize what Bauer says are essentially land-based casinos.

"They can't change the rules," Bauer said.

I know some will say the legislators are being silly, wasting time on a superficial distinction after they have allowed gambling to take over the whole state, but that's only because they don't understand the sophisticated reasoning being deployed. If I gamble in a "building," it's like I'm giving in to sin in a way that feels like my normal life, which means I could come to accept it as natural and become addicted to it. If I gamble on a "boat," which I am hardly ever on, it will seem like an exotic experience, a fun fling of the kind one only engages in when 100 miles from home and there are no cameras, so I am much less likely to decline into wastrelness.

I bet you didn't think our legislators were capable of such subtleties.

Comments

Steve Towsley
Sat, 12/30/2006 - 2:49am

It's the Cuban refugees' wet foot/dry foot rule re-purposed as Indiana's gambling litmus test! All you need to complete the fantasy is casino-wide muzak playing Jimi Hendrix's "You Got Me Floating" on a continuous loop.

You really have to wonder how they are going to thread this bent needle in the long run.

Hey! How about a little Parachute Poker? Bass Boat Baccarat? Lake Lotto? BMV Blackjack? (Ouch)

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