Online poker and gambling seem to be infiltrating mainstream media more and more these days with even Jay Leno talking about it.

Rep. Barney Frank was called in as a guest on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” on NBC to discuss online gambling. Frank’s bill was passed by his House Financial Services Committee at the end of July and is now being considered by the entire Senate.

While on Leno’s show Frank mentioned, to a loudly applauding audience, how the licensing and regulation of online gambling in the US will result in billions of dollars in tax revenue. 

Meanwhile Leno brought up his own argument for why he thought online gambling should not be legalised. This is what he had to say:
 
“To me, Vegas works because you have to go to the desert to get there. You have to make an effort. You go to the desert, you lose your money and you come home. You can’t go to the desert again unless you get more money. If you’re sitting at home and you’re up late at night and you got your little credit card, next thing you know... it’s like a mini bar. You’re not going to eat the potato chips unless they are in the mini-bar.”

Frank was clearly not taken by surprise by Leno’s standpoint and responded by pointing out that gambling is not restricted to Vegas and is widely available in other places and that credit cards would not be used to gamble online if online gambling were to be legalised.

Frank’s overall position seemed to be that adults shouldn’t be treated like children and that they should be entitled to make their own choice (that illusive freedom theme) and when they do make the choice to gamble online there could be a lot of money to be made by regulating it. Leno stuck with his “go to the desert” argument.

Whether we agree with Leno or Frank, the reality is that Leno is the man who has millions of devoted viewers and these viewers will be more likely to take his side.

WSOP bracelet winner Annie Duke, otherwise known as the “Duchess of Poker” can now add another name to her collection- a congressional witness- as she is now advocating the right for every American to gamble online in the privacy of their own homes.

Duke expressed this view to the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday, and also argued that there were huge advantages to legalising and regulating an ever growing and lucrative underground online gambling market.

"At its most basic level, the issue before this committee is personal freedom, the right of individual Americans to do what they want in the privacy of their homes without the intrusion of the government," Duke said.

As it presently stands, online poker is illegal in the US but players still go to the online casino sites that are set up offshore and therefore beyond the reach of federal regulators.

Duke is firmly behind the views of Rep. Barney Frank, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, who is trying to introduce a bill that would legalise and tax the online gambling websites.

Frank advocates the players’ freedom to choose: "Unwise choices [are] part of freedom."

If this bill is passed the taxes on it could bring in almost $42 billion for the federal government for the next 10 years.