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John Glenn, who died Thursday at age 95, was an American patriot.
He was a World War II and Korean War fighter pilot.
He was an astronaut.
He was a U.S. senator.
He was also no friend of gambling.
As a senator, representing the State of Ohio, he supported the U.S. Senate's first effort to make Internet gambling illegal in the USA.
The year was 1998 and the Senate was considering Senate Amendment 3266, an amendment to a bill dealing with conservation and other issues.
The amendment, sponsored by Jon Kyl, a Republican senator from Arizona and a noted foe of online gambling, came on the heels of the U.S. Justice Department charging 21 Americans with operating illegal offshore casinos and sportsbooks in Costa Rica and the Caribbean (the infamous "Internet 21" case).
According to Vote Smart (www.votesmart.org), a non-partisan watchdog group that tracks the votes of members of the U.S. Congress, the amendment banned "placing, receiving or otherwise making a bet or wager on the Internet and set penalties for knowingly gambling over the Internet as a fine of up to $500, three months imprisonment or both."
The amendment also "set penalties for knowingly creating an Internet gambling business as a fine of up to $20,000 or four months imprisonment or both and permits Internet gambling if it is run by a lawful state lottery or is a closed-loop subscriber-based service that is wholly intrastate, on Indian land or a fantasy sport."
The amendment passed the Senate by a vote of 90-10, with Glenn, a Democrat in his 24th and final year in the Senate, casting a vote to pass the amendment.
Had the amended conservation bill then passed the Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives and been signed by then-President Bill Clinton, Internet gambling would have become illegal in the USA in 1998.
But the bill stalled and was never passed, so the anti-Internet gambling amendment to it became moot.
Internet gambling eventually became illegal in the USA in 2006 when a bill sponsored by Kyl called the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act or UIGEA successfully passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law by then-President George W. Bush.
By Tom Somach
Gambling 911 Staff Writer
