Where have you been?

Hello sports fans.

I'm working on a couple of new essays, but my work's been interrupted by a little R and R...a few days in Atlantic City with Grandmother and daughter. Alice has decided to master the game of craps. Gram and I are content just to keep losing at Double Attack Blackjack.

I hope Pennsylvania expands the Gaming Law to include table games. There's money to be made (yeah, I know the moral arguments). Plus slots are so mindless. Except for Video Poker.

In the days before the legislature approved the Gaming Law, I had an idea for bringing casino gambling to the state by Native Americans. The city of Harrisburg was constructing a new parking garage on City Island, and had an archeological team doing a dig to locate and preserve Native American artifacts. I was hoping that the artifacts would establish ownership of the Island by one or more of the tribes who occupied this area prior to the arrival of the Europeans, and that their descendants would then claim owership of the Island and proceed to establish a casino on it. It didn't happen, but I thought it would have been a neat way of getting around the legislature's foot-draggin on approving casino gaming.

As I've often said, the motto of the Pennsylvania General Assembly should be, "You Can't Legislate Morality. Oh Yes, We Can."