Thanks to a new law in the State of Washington, it is now illegal to blog about illegal gambling.
The first casualty in the state’s war on Internet gambling is a local Web site where nobody was actually doing any gambling.
What a Bellingham man did on his site was write about online gambling. He reviewed Internet casinos. He had links to them, and ran ads by them. He fancied himself a guide to an uncharted frontier, even compiling a list of “rogue casinos” that had bilked gamblers.
All that, says the state ? the ads, the linking, even the discussing ? violates a new state law barring online wagering or using the Internet to transmit “gambling information.”
“It’s what the feds would call ‘aiding and abetting,’ ” says the director of the state’s gambling commission, Rick Day. “Telling people how to gamble online, where to do it, giving a link to it ? that’s all obviously enabling something that is illegal.”
So even discussing illegal gambling itself is now illegal ? Apparently, the First Amendment doesn’t apply in Washington state anymore than it does in Washington, D.C.
Randly Balko puts it well:
A state arrogant enough to think it has the right to ban consensual private behavior (while at the same time encouraging such behavior when it comes to state-sponsored institutions like the lottery) is certainly arrogant enough to go after people for endorsing said behavior, too. He should be outraged, but not surprised.
Exactly.
H/T: Jacqueline Passey, who won’t be moving back to Washington and is thinking of moving her blog
.
