Disgraced former lobbyist, convicted felon and all-around scumbag Jack Abramoff has proven fatal to the career of yet another avaricious Washington hack. Outgoing Rep. Robert Ney (R-OH) once the so-called “Mayor of Capitol Hill,” has agreed to plead guilty to accepting a multiplicity of bribes, including gambling chips. Ney is expected to plead out on [...]

Beleagured American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are having their operations held hostage by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN). The presidential aspirant has appended an anti-Internet gambling rider to bills authorizing ongoing military holding actions in the Mideast. Why gee, gosh, golly, it seems that Slick Billy was just a-stumpin’ and a-speechifyin’ up and down [...]

The following letter, from a local resident, was received yesterday. It is presented verbatim and unedited. Mr. Andrew Pascal, President September 12, 2006 Wynn Las Vegas, LLC 3131 Las Vegas Boulevard, South Las Vegas, Nevada 89109 Dear Mr. Pascal: I am writing you because I am concerned about Mr. Wynn’s rapidly declining public image directly attributable to your questionable policy decisions. [...]

SportingBet supremo Peter Dicks is all over the news today, as his

Another Internet casino boss has been busted. This time it’s SportingBet Chairman Peter Dicks. Not on a federal rap but a silly-sounding Lousiana law that criminalizes “gambling by computer.” Honestly. If every Pelican State punter who plays online were prosecuted under such a statute, there’d probably be no room on Louisiana’s jails for all those crooked [...]

A fireworks display set to a Sinatra recording of “Lucky Be a Lady Tonight”? Steve Wynn’s notions of how to commemorate the opening of a new casino seem to have devolved to 1989. (It could have been worse: Wynn could have played the Marlon Brando version of that Frank Loesser standard.) Not everybody agrees. Local [...]

Harvey Whittemore is a lawyer and lobbyist used to getting his own way. Why not, when he has people like Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid carrying water for him on his city-in-the-middle-of-nowhere, Coyote Springs? Thus it comes as no surprise that Whittemore was well and truly peeved when the Sparks City Council voted down his application [...]

My Business Press colleague, Valerie Miller, snapped this from an Amtrak train, whilst passing through Tacoma, Wash., en route to an extended vacation in Canada. She writes: The LVCVA is hoping residents will be seduced into visiting Las Vegas — perhaps during the rainy season. Once again, our tourism promoters appear to be promoting marital infidelity instead. [...]

Sprawling Bally’s Las Vegas’s fate has been hanging in limbo ever since Harrah’s Entertainment vanquished Caesars Entertainment. (Feel free to insert your favorite “fall of the Roman empire” analogy here.) Harrah’s boss Gary Loveman has floated the possibility of imploding the blue-rinsed old gal, but Harrah’s likes to emphasize that no decision has been [...]

Another batch of reports from Majestic Research is in and there’s the usual: Harrah’s Entertainment up, Boyd Gaming down, grimy and dysfunctional Luxor falling off the face of the earth, plus an interesting new trend-let in the locals market. While it’s perilous to extrapolate a panorama from one snapshot, Majestic’s 3Q06 ranking of off-Strip play (i.e., [...]