You have to be an early riser to keep abreast of the twists and turns in the BetonSports saga, which is quickly degenerating into farce. The Telegraph reports that the company’s founder, bookie Gary Kaplan has fled to Israel. My favorite line has Kaplan “preferring to dodge Hezbollah rockets rather than risk [U.S.] justice.” Kind of lends a whole new meaning to “Give me liberty or give me death,” doesn’t it? The mental image of Dog the Bounty Hunter combing Costa Rica for the fugitive Kaplan is mildly diverting, too. In other news …

Macao’s success breeds imitation. Bloomberg reports that the government of Japan is taking a good, hard look at Singapore-scale casino projects. The prospective operators who are in talks with the Nipponese government include Las Vegas Sands and Harrah’s Entertainment.

Speaking of Macao … Second-generation tycoons James Packer and Laurence Ho have lined up a quartet of banks to underwrite their underwater casino joint venture. The PBL/Melco alliance is certainly ambitious, to say nothing of giving me pleasant flashbacks of badgering my parents into letting me watch City Beneath the Sea, back when I was a bothersome little tyke—as opposed to now, when I’m merely bothersome.

Keepin’ ‘em on the Rez. Pugnacious congresssman Rep. Richard Pombo has passed a bill out of the Resources Committee that would restrict future Indian casinos to extant tribal reservations. This is good for those tribes whose ancestors were exiled to patches of land near what would eventually become large metropolitan areas or major highways. Unfortunately, it seals off one significant avenue of economic development from tribes that the U.S. government saw fit to stick in environs that are still remote, thinly populated and/or largely inacessible. In such matters, it’s always a good rule that if Dick Pombo is for it, you can’t go wrong being against it.

Garden State Gambling Expansion? As VLT gambling sputters forward in New York, Delaware expands its slot inventory, and Pennsylvania sorts out applicants for slot parlors and racinos, New Jersey Gov. Jon “Tax ‘Em” Corzine is fretting that a strategy must be devised to shield Atlantic City’s casinos from competing market forces. Whether a city—any city—should be protected from the dynamics of a supply-and-demand market is a philosophical debate I’m unfit to wage. But since Corzine is unilaterally taking New Jersey VLTs off the table, you have to wonder just how many forms of “protection” he has left to deploy.