[Mr.K]

A couple of points responding to the last 6 ot 7 posts:

- The DoD Authorization is already in conference, and the conferees + leaders can throw anything they want in there. They do not have to separately conference those items, or go through any other rigamaroll. They stick in what they want to stick in, and then all the need to do from there is: get the conferees from the House and Senate to separately approve the conference report (do not get hung up on this -- it is mostly routine and not done by some public vote, so don't latch on to this as a possible point of delay), then file the conference report in the House or Senate for consideration, pass it through the first body and then through the second.

- Points of order may lie against the conference report, if it includes the gambling legislation, but I guarantee they won't be raised, or, if raised, that they won't succeed. Just trust me. Don't get hung up on this, because if it comes to that, the points of order won't matter. The entire game is whether gambling provisions go in the conference report, if the conference report ever gets voted on, and what those provisions look like as far as substance.

- "Spirit of the holds" is something that really just doesn't exist as far as I know. Senators always have a chance to find out what is in a bill, and what is coming to the floor, and if they want to hold it, they can try. Leaders can defeat holds through cloture, and that's the way the game plays out. Leaders would never waste time to get cloture on the Internet gambling bill itself -- it is too small -- but they might on a DoD bill that just so happens to have the gambling provisions attached to it. Their motivation for defeating holds via cloture on the DoD bill would not be to move gambling legislation... they just are not plotting to do this the way some of you think they are... but rather to move an important package of defense laws on procurement, troop pay, and other policy matters. I think the way holds would play on a DoD Authorization bill containing the gambling legislation is that Senators would threaten to hold it up if the gambling legislation is attached in a form they don't like -- and that threat can be powerful depending on how sincere it is perceived to be. This is why I think we're hearing all the talk about a significantly narrowed bill.

- If the language being floated by Frist (and I 100% guarantee there is language circulating, although a select few staffers may have access to it) is as narrow as the newspapers are reporting, it could represent a MAJOR win for online poker players. Few players I am aware of use credit cards, and as I have said before, there may be very good public policy reasons for prohibiting credit cards from being used to finance gambling. Passage of a credit card only provision would not amend the Wire Act, and would not enact some of the other sweeping changes I have seen online poker players expressing concern about. Plus, passage of the narrow legislation would likely forestall passage of other, more comprehensive legislation for at least a year, if not longer. Once Congress acts on an issue, it is usually loathe to revisit it for a long while.