Looks like regulations passed back in 2006 for (Unlawful Internet Gambling Act) online gambling have taken another setback thanks to a petition from the Poker Players Alliance.

Alphonse D’Amato, chair of the Poker Players Alliance, couldn’t be happier about the delay in the enforcement of the regulations, which has been pushed back to June, 1 2010 by the Federal Reserve and Department of Treasury.

“The Poker Players Alliance is extremely pleased with the decision by the Federal Reserve and Treasury to grant the six month extension,” said chairman of the alliance former New York Sen. Alphonse D’Amato in a news release. “This is a great victory for poker.”

Alphonse D’Amato and the Poker Players Alliance said the law includes “vague” stipulations that they want clarified.

Alphonse D’Amato was a U.S. Senator in New York from 1981-1999. During that time he led as Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.

The Poker Players Alliance, along with the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and the American Greyhound Track Operators Association, issued a petition for the delay to give lawmakers more time to clarify the law, according to a press release from the poker alliance.

“These additional months are critical to provide legislators time to clarify (the Act) and pass legislation to license and regulate poker early next year,” Alphonse D’Amato said. “It is our hope that another extension would be granted should the deadline approach before these pieces of legislation can be passed.”

The alliance, which maintains that it will remain committed to passing legislation to license and regulate online poker, is calling for protections to be included in the bill for underage and compulsive gamblers. A hearing is to be held on Dec. 3, 2009 in the House Financial Services Committee.

It’s still a mystery of sorts. Did they or didn’t they crash The White House State Dinner last week?

Michaele and Tareq Salahi, who have been accused of crashing the party and have spurred a security breach scare with the Secret Service, appeared on NBC’s “Today” show espousing their innocence and insisting that they were “invited” to the State Dinner. However, no one from The White House staff or security seems to be in agreement with that.

The case is made murkier still based on reports that Michaele is aspiring to get on Bravo’s upcoming reality television series “Real Housewives of D.C.”

Watch Matt Lauer’s interview with the Salahi’s:

The interview Jon Stewart did with Vice President Joe Biden is getting a lot of buzz in the media and online.

The interview aired Tuesday, Nov 17 on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and wasn’t all that revealing but contained one phrase that turned some heads.

Some called Biden’s performance “funny and informative,” but at one point Biden said that socialism was for the rich and capitalism for the poor.

He was addressing concerns that taxpayers have over the way financial institutions were pulled out of hot water to avoid a “great depression.”

“It’s socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor,” Biden told Stewart.

“If we did not bail them out, we would have been in a position where there was a literal depression, not a recession,” Biden later told Stewart.

Jamie Gorelick, who was the Deputy Attorney General during the Clinton Administration and a member of the 9-11 Commission, queues in on the future of America’s National Security under a demoralized Justice Department and what will soon be a new presidency. Jamie Gorelick also chairs the United Technologies Corporation.

A New Agenda for Justice

By Jamie S. Gorelick

Tuesday, August 28, 2007; Page A13

The next attorney general will inherit a demoralized Justice Department that has been cut adrift from its historical values and well-honored traditions. New leadership offers an opportunity for Justice to return to its best traditions under both Democrats and Republicans. Here are 10 priorities that would help the next attorney general guide the department back on course:

# Restore credibility and comity with Congress. Having the backing and support of Congress is critical. Lawmakers will give Justice the room it needs if they believe that the attorney general and his or her subordinates are straightforward in their dealings and open to legitimate oversight.

“Take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Every president promises to ensure that the government adheres to the law and the Constitution. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has historically been — and needs to be — the voice for the rule of law in the president’s deliberations, providing an honest appraisal of applicable law, even if that advice will constrain the administration’s pursuit of desired policies. This mandate applies with special force where the office’s advice is unlikely to be subject to review by the courts. Where an opinion is so widely ridiculed that the department has to withdraw it, as was the case with the first “torture memo,” confidence in the department’s fealty to the law is undermined.

Read the rest of Jamie Gorelick’s A New Agenda for Justice.

Jamie Gorelick is a lawyer at Wilmer Hale.

Jamie Gorelick reflects on 9-11.

View a question an answer session with Jamie Gorelick who was formally Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae.

Jamie Gorelick’s career history can be found at http://www.jamie-gorelick.com.

Read the 9-11 commission of which Jamie Gorelick was a part.

Review Jamie Gorelick’s political affiliations.

View press releases for Jamie Gorelick.

With Wall Street panicky with fear over the financial market and banks tightening credit, businesses all over America are suffering. When businesses can’t get loans, operations grind to a standstill. Production stops. Manufactures lose money. And then, if the situation doesn’t get oiled, people start losing their jobs–in every industry.

There is no way to avoid a recession following the collapse of so many financial giants this summer, but in order to avoid a long and bitter Depression with a capital D, the economic machine needs to be greased. The grease for the economy is money–flowing money.

But of course money comes at a price (after all, it is money!) If the American tax payer doesn’t foot the bill, then the government has to borrow (thereby ballooning an already monstrous deficit). These are the details being debated hotly in Congress. Part of the problem, of course, is that many constituents (and probably elected Congress officials) don’t fully understand the problem much less how to fix it. And there IS no perfect solution. Keeping that in mind, the best solution is the one that can squeak through the barriers of Congressional out-holding and oil up the gears of the economic engine.

Hopefully, today’s “solution” won’t be something America’s future generations will curse us for. In the meantime, President Bush is calling for Congress to do something–and do it fast!

Furious lobbying for much-maligned bailout bill

By CHARLES BABINGTON and JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON – President Bush and congressional leaders conducted fierce eleventh-hour lobbying Thursday for enough House votes to push the $700 billion financial industry bailout bill to the finish line.

Bush said “a lot of people are watching” and he kept up his pleas from the White House as Democratic and Republican party leaders worked over wayward colleagues wherever they could find them. Bush argued that the measure represents the “best chance” to calm unnerved financial markets and ease a widening credit crunch.

Rep. Steny Hoyer, the second-ranking House Democrat, said that his party won’t put the bill up for the vote planned for Friday unless lawmakers are sure it will pass.

Speaking to reporters during a meeting with business executives, Bush said the increasingly tight credit markets are in some instances threatening the existence of small businesses. He said Congress “must listen” to those arguing for passage of the bill, derided by many on Capitol Hill and within the general public as a handout to a risk-taking Wall Street.

The much-maligned measure was returned to the House after the Senate resuscitated it with tax cuts and other sweeteners in a 74-25 vote late Wednesday. The bill had been defeated in House narrowly on Monday.

Read the rest of Furious lobbying for much-maligned bailout bill on Yahoo News.