Perhaps it's time for those of us who've been fighting against the spread of gambling in Indiana to just give it up as a lost cause:
Former Republican state Sen. Robert Meeks of LaGrange said he wanted lawmakers to allow residents of Steuben County in far northeastern Indiana to vote in a 2010 referendum on whether they would accept a casino. He said northeastern Indiana was the only large swath of the state without a casino.
"Gaming is here and we ought to protect gaming," Meeks said.
I suppose he has a point about northeastern Indiana being the "only large swatch" of the state without its own casino. We have to drive for more than an hour to Anderson in order to lose our money; it hardly seems fair. With gambling so pervasive that anybody who wants to gamble can find it legally within an hour or so's drive, what's the reason for keeping a casino out of Fort Wayne or LaGrange?
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What possesses presumably otherwise intelligent human beings like Meeks from making ridiculous statements such as "we ought to protect gaming" as if he were referring to some endangered species? Since when does such a heavily patronized vice need "protection?" Meeks is apparently confusing public interests with those of some lurking beneath the tables and in the back rooms.