The House Rules Committee passed the conference committee report that included the anti-gambling measures. You can read it here, starting at page 214.
Senate is currently debating a Parental Notification Bill (well, actually, they're debating on how much longer to debate on the bill). We can assume the Safe Ports bill will be up soon. It is highly unlikely that it will not pass.
You can keep tabs on things with industry insiders over at 2+2, or follow along on C-SPAN2
9:35pm (central) - Senate is talking about bill now. Frank Lautenberg from NJ is questioning why Democratic provisons were taken out of the bill but the online gambling part was put in. We love him.
"They stripped out important provisions, but made sure that it was illegal to play Texas Hold'Em poker games on your computer."
9:42pm Susan Collins, R-Maine, is speaking now. No mention of the ban, just tooting their horn.
9:56pm - Quorum Call - checking to see who's in.
10:03pm - Call over. Back to discussion, though now they're referring to the earlier measure that was passed, putting a fence up on the border.
Loved this post from 2+2 -
Great 2 day stretch for our government...legalize torture, get rid of habeus corpus, and it turns out the speaker of the house knew that the congressman in charge of the committee on missing and exploited children was having dirty AIM chats with 16 year olds, let's now deal with a real threat...internet gambling.
10:11pm - Sounds like something is up. Quorum calls are a great way for Senators to have private discussions under the pretense of offical actions. That room is empty, they know there's no quorum. And now we're not talking about the Port Security act at all, but it'll be back.
10:23pm - Passed Senate, 80-19. House apparently still debating it.
10:29pm - Leach now talking about ban.
"One of the most important pieces of family legislation ever considered."
"Never has it been so easy to lose so much, so quickly, at such a young age."
10:35pm - Rep. John Dingell, D-MI is talking about how the bill was drafted without Democratic input, how many of the measures the House wanted were left out. It's maddening to be sure, but I don't think it's going to be enough.
10:44pm - Loretta Sanchez, D-CA
"If you have time to stick internet gambling in our port bill, then I think you could have held a meeting today, or tomorrow if we had to stay an extra day, or tomorrow if we had to stay an extra day, to make our country safer."
10:47pm - Richard King, R-NY is now speaking about how awesome the bill is because everyone worked together, and he just can't understand why people are pissed. Apparently he missed the speech from Rep. Sanchez that clearly said they were pissed because they took out the rail security, didn't allow admendments, but put in this internet ban.
10:52pm As I told Dan, it's these last minute governmental clusterfucks that just confirm my decision to never get in to government.
Here's the deal - CSPAN2 ran a ticker saying the Senate had passed the bill. But the Senate website isn't showing that. Maybe it's late. Maybe the guy manning CSPAN is drunk. [Actually, that ticker probably referred to their passage of the previous bill, before it went to the conference committee that created this new bill.] Right now the Senate is engaged in another quorum call. Perhaps they're out kicking puppies.
