The United States government should stay out of my online poker business.

Thanks for posting this debate. This is a great subject. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss it in this forum. In the first round, you described my role as this: "My opponent will take the con/against side of the debate and try to prove that our government should in fact be able to shut down poker sites that are accepting money from American citizens." In the 2nd round, it was this: "My opponent will try and argue that poker is in fact considered gambling and should therefore be regulated by gaming commissions. This is a false front and will be picked completely and utterly apart by myself in the following rounds. To him, I say, good luck and good debate". As far as I'm concerned my role, as outlined in the first round, is to argue for this point: "prove that our government should in fact be able to shut down poker sites that are accepting money from American citizens." Well, of course, they SHOULD be able to do this!! And, they just did....why? How? Here's why. In 2006, our government passed a law known as the, "Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act". It was part of the "SAFE port" act. And, it was originally designed to guard the U.S. against terrorists laundering money through internet gambling sites. I'd been gambling for a few years on POKERSTARS.com when this happened. I thought my fun was over - but, being the rebel that I am...I kept funding my account and playing just as much as before. The only difference was that NOW, when I funded my account with, say, $20, it would show up as a payment to a "flower shop", or an "consulting" firm. Finally, it became an anonymous web ID number. I knew that some law HAD to have been being broken. I just didn't really know which one. And, frankly, I didn't care. I just wanted to play poker. At one point, I started my own little investigation into Pokerstars. I found that it's based in a little island country located in the Irish Sea, between Great Britain and Ireland, called, "Isle of Man". Kinda shady...NO? Well, after my own investigation, I wanted to find out more about this so-called, "Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act". I found out it's a REAL law!! And, now the government is going to enforce it. As it is written, it "prohibits gambling businesses from knowingly accepting payments in connection with the participation of another person in a bet or wager that involves the use of the Internet and that is unlawful under any federal or state law." Now, 'is the law just'? Is it a fair law? Does it make sense? You very well may answer "NO" to all of those questions, but the truth is that these companies were knowingly, and willingly, breaking the law...and committing fraud to do so. This law, as with many others, may need to be changed. But, until it is...citizens and companies doing business in the United States have to abide by it, or suffer the penalties. Maybe, these companies should have spent more of the $3 billion that the government is going after on some high-priced Washington DC lobbying outfit, instead of creating phony "shell" companies to launder their money. We'll all be playing at CaesersPalace.com before long anyway. more to follow....next round :)