Skip to main content

Shurtleff + Swallow = Wow!!!

How would a top legal officer in the state of Utah be answering
questions about whether gambling is legal in Utah?  More importantly, how would that officer NOT know that it IS illegal?

As the Salt Lake Tribune reports
Running a poker business is unlawful under the Illegal Gambling Business Act of 1970 if the state where it is being played prohibits it. To enforce that law in the Internet age, Congress in 2006 passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which bars acceptance of certain types of payments in connection with any illegal wagering.
Yet the following is part of an email conversation between recently resigned Attorney General John Swallow (at the time assistant AG) and a gambling industry representative.
"The question here is: Is there a Utah law that prohibits the processing of poker transactions for persons in other states and countries aside from Utah?" [Jeremy] Johnson wrote to Swallow in July after the April meeting. 
Swallow, who succeeded Shurtleff in January as attorney general, responded: "Jeremy, I am not aware of any such law in Utah to prohibit what you are doing," adding that he would have a lawyer in the office investigate further.
That's probably enough right there to prove that Swallow was not qualified to work in the Attorney general's office.

While Mark Shurtleff was Attorney General, he and Swallow met with representatives from the gambling industry. Yet, improbably, according to the Tribune:
Former Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said Tuesday he never had discussions about the legality of processing online-poker payments in 2010, when he met with representatives from the online-poker industry...
Does anyone besides me see anything "odd" about the top legal personnel in Utah meeting with members of an industry whose activities are ALL illegal in the state?




Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for commenting. If you have a Google/Blogger account, to be apprised of ongoing comment activity on this article, please click the "Subscribe" link below.

Popular posts from this blog

The Inhumanity of Bob Lonsberry: Waterboarding, Concentration Camps, and the the Bataan Death March

KNRS 570 radio talk show host Bob Lonsberry advocated waterboarding and other forms of torture during his show on April 21, 2009. More grotesquely, he was beaming with pride about his advocacy campaign. It's difficult to imagine then, that, by the same rationale, had Lonsberry been a German at the time of Hitler, or a Japanese during the Bataan Death March, that he would not have advocated torture of Jews in the concentration camps or the bayoneting and shooting of American soldiers on the Bataan trail. Torture, Torture, Everywhere! Nearly 80,000 American soldiers were captured by the Japanese in the To contemplate a discussion about whether or not torture is legal or whether it even works, it is first required to come to the conclusion that 'I am a child of God, but my adversary is a monkey'. Phillipines in 1942 and forced to march with no food and very little water for six days. If a man stumbled, if he didn't respond quickly to a command, or if he tried to get wat...
50 comments
Read more

What's Your Reaction to California's Decision on Same-Sex Marriage?

Yesterday a "Republican-dominated" California Supreme Court struck down state laws against same-sex marriages. The LDS Church issued a press release, calling the decision "unfortunate". I agree, but not for reasons you might think. Did the California Court make the right decision? Update 5/17/2008 : California decision does not affect prohibitions against polygamy and marriage of close relatives. Why not? Government should not sanction same-sex marriages for the same reason that it should not sanction heterosexual adultery--such activities tend to be destructive to the family as the fundamental unit of society. Before you get too far into reading into my words, let me echo and agree with something that Madeleine Albright wrote in her recent book, The Mighty & The Almighty (one of the better books that I have read in a long time): I oppose discrimination against gays and lesbians and am convinced that heterosexual adultery is a greater danger to the institu...
67 comments
Read more

"Media Matters" But Not The Truth

I don't even like Rush Limbaugh, but it's clear what he said about "phony soldiers". I'm not sure why Media Matters can't get it correct. Maybe because they don't want to. Update: Who's calling who a phony? Huh, moveon.org? Update 10/5/2007: There are many "phony soldiers" that the government is investigating. Why would Rush Limbaugh say that all soldiers who are against the war are "phony soldiers"? They're not. Rush knows it. I don't know why he would say that. But I don't have to try to figure out why, because HE DIDN'T SAY THAT. Media Matters has this to say about itself on its website : Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. At least they openly admit that they're only working at "correcting conservative misin...
38 comments
Read more