Rudy and the Riverboat Gamblers: Socially Conservative Where It Doesn't Count
Here's an interesting tidbit about Mayor Giuliani, from the Journal of Commerce, December 24, 1997. (Available on Lexis-Nexis.) It's from an article by Dennis Bryant about changes in the demarcation in territorial v. international waters:
In 1996, though, Congress passed an anti-terrorism bill that expanded to 12 miles the territorial sea for the purpose of most federal criminal laws. Initially, this measure, too, largely escaped notice.Rudy's still floundering from the video of him calling for public funding for abortions, but somehow I don't think this will firm up his support with social conservatives. There are a lot of people who strongly oppose abortion, yet who don't give a rip about what how people throw their money away on a barge out in New York Harbor. I'm one of them.Obscurity might have continued for some time, except that New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani took umbrage at the prospect of gaming vessels operating cruises-to-nowhere from the Port of New York. His concern resulted in the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York bringing a forfeiture action against a gambling device from the Liberty I, a vessel that had been conducting gaming cruises from Sheepshead Bay. The U.S. attorney alleged that such action within 12 miles of shore violated the Gambling Ship Act.
It may not help him much with more socially liberal Republicans either, like Ace and Karol, for example, who have taken offense at recent anti-gambling bills, pointing out that there's a freaking war on now and terrorists are trying to kill us, not play blackjack.
They also may not care very much. But it just seems that being pro-abortion and anti-gambling* is the worst of both worlds, and those who admired Rudy for his freedom from nanny-state impulses might want to re-think that.
* I'm not so sure that he is anti-gambling, per se. But why would you just "take umbrage" at people gambling on boats? Is that extra-offensive somehow if it's on the water? That's just weird.
UPDATE: Karol posts to insist that she's not no liberal of no kind nohow, and threatens to sic the Putin-assassin gangs on me if I say so again. If posting is light this weekend, you know what happened.