"Engaging in a game of chance" illegal in NC. Now go buy your damn Lotto tickets!

Thank Christ [irony fully intended] that I don't live in the Bible Belt anymore, where they've yet to resolve their hypocritical split personality.

Poker Standout Rips Cops After Bust - AOL News:

"A poker champion cited on a misdemeanor gambling charge in a weekend raid on a clandestine casino...

Officials said the operation was sophisticated. The plain, one-story building off N.C. Highway 242 near Benson was surrounded by a fence, had pro-style gaming tables and a kitchen and food staff. Agents seized about $70,000 in cash.

...Forbis said 60 people were charged with engaging in a game of chance, or gambling, and 11 were charged with operating a game of chance.

"The point is it is illegal," he said. "The analogy is if you catch someone smoking marijuana they say why aren't you trying to get a coke or heroin dealer. The law is the law and it's not up to ALE to systematically chose the laws we enforce.""

See, that last bit... I call bullshit. Even though you hear it all the time. "The law is the law" nonsense. First off, you totally have choice in where you choose to focus your resources. They apparently choose to focus on victimless crimes committed by consenting adults. That, oh so conveniently, add about 70K to their coffers.

But regardless of that, I'll invoke the experience I had riding around with a cop buddy of mine, where he pointed out, driving around, a rapid-fire litany of "problems" or potential illegalities he noticed with the vehicles and drivers in the area around us. And when I asked him about how, out of all the potential violations he noticed, how did stop them all, he answered - of course - "You don't, you use your best judgment" about who to stop.

In my opinion, LEO's are constantly making exactly these types of judgment calls on what laws to enforce, to what extent, what your priorities are and under what circumstances. The very existence of "letting you off with a warning" is the most obvious evidence of that.

[Which, fundamentally, is probably a good thing. I'd much rather have somebody able to use his own common-sense judgment in a situation than be hidebound to the letter of some law. Generally.]

So the "law is the law" diatribe is, ahem, a "cop-out."

[Thank you, I'll be here all week. Tip your waitresses.]