PPA presents petition to President today...

[4 of a kind]

Ante raised for legalized online poker
BY FREDERIC J. FROMMER
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON ---- The Poker Players Alliance hopes a hot hand in the nation’s capital this week will help its efforts to legalize online poker.
As part of its “National Poker Week,” the group has set up nearly 100 meetings with members of Congress and their aides, and plans to present a petition to President Barack Obama today that had more than 350,000 signatures at last count.
Last night, the poker group hosted a charity poker tournament, with proceeds going to the USO and Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
The Poker Players Alliance, chaired by former New York Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, gets its money from the Interactive Gaming Council, a Vancouver, B.C.-based trade association for online casinos, as well as from the alliance’s members.
In 2006, Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which aimed to curb online gambling by prohibiting financial institutions from accepting payments from credit cards, checks or electronic fund transfers to settle online wagers.
The law didn’t provide a clear definition of unlawful Internet gambling, instead referring to existing federal and state laws, which themselves provoke differing interpretations.
The Justice Department maintained that internet gambling was illegal even before that law, a position the poker players challenge. The group’s goal is to pass legislation that would license and regulate online poker.
The poker group supports legislation by Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, that would regulate rather than ban Internet gambling.
In its petition to Obama the group is seeking exemption from the illegal gambling act.