Your Online Gaming Sessions Are Illegal, Declares Sessions In His Last Session

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - And by online gaming I mean online gambling, but there's a lesson there.

Once upon a time, I actually wrote on KoopaTV, “we're happy that Jeff Sessions was just confirmed to be President Donald John Trump's Attorney General!” I can't justify that statement, since it's weird even for the early-2017 President Donald John Trump honeymoon period. Maybe it was sarcasm. I want the benefit of the doubt. I never liked Jeff Sessions (aka Attorney General/Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III), believe me. Still don't.

Jeff Sessions recently got FIRED by President Donald John Trump, and for excellent reasons being that he was useless and counterproductive. Dude hates states rights and liberty, too. And his insistence on non-Senator power is the reason that we even know who Roy Moore is. (And similar sexual harasser Roy of Pherae.)

But right before he did, the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the President and the Attorney General on legal matters, issued a memorandum saying that the Wire Act, which was previously thought to just ban online sportsbetting in the United States, applies to all forms of gambling. (Don't actually try to read the memo—it's two-dozen pages about interpreting almost 60-year old comma usage. Not that ancient grammar isn't important, but it's bad reading material, unlike the rest of this article.)

Between 2011 and now (thanks President Barack Hussein Obama—non-ironically), the Justice Department saw the Wire Act of 1961 as only applying to sportsbetting as it relates to online wagering, meaning state-regulated online casinos and lottery are just fine. So states like Georgia set up (online) lotteries like the Georgia Lottery, which funds the crucial HOPE Scholarship in that state. People like Rawk get their gambling fix, and kids get scholarships to go to school. Works out for everyone. But now the online Georgia Lottery is considered illegal.

Why did the Justice Department suddenly come to this new conclusion? Well, I think I know why.

People in the online gambling industry attribute the intense lobbying by (offline) casino magnate Sheldon Gary Adelson and his Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling (which applauded the Department of Justice yesterday) as the reason for the sudden decision. I believe it's actually because of how the gaming industry — the videogame industry, not the gambling industry — treated Jeff Sessions during his Congressional testimony back in 2017.

Jeff Sessions was looking for us to look at him posing with his glasses for hours.
Instead, we were watching giraffe titans and Captain Goomba.

While we were watching E3 2017—specifically about Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions—Jeff Sessions was testifying to the Senate Intelligence Committee about Russian meddling in the 2016 election, as well as about disgraced FBI director James Brien Comey Jr. And that he wouldn't interfere with Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III's witch hunt. (What's with these III people? Where's Hermie III?)

His intention was to defend his honour and integrity, which are deeply important to him as a Southern gentleman.

The testimony from Jeff Sessions did absolutely nothing to improve his standing among anyone in the United States, the planet Earth, or the extended universe where us Koopas hang out. He didn't convince anyone of anything. His boss, President Donald John Trump, still wanted to fire the guy and considered him a loser.

Angry, Jeff Sessions used his position of power as the Attorney General to go after anything he saw as a threat to people paying attention to him and his attempted defence of his honour. That's why, unlike his predecessor, he went after providers of marijuana and other drugs, because people were using cannabis as an escapism method from his speech. Unlike his predecessor, he supported civil asset forfeiture and mandatory minimum sentences, so people would lose their houses and privacy and go to prison, where they would be a literally captive audience to his testimony and activity. And unlike his predecessor, he went after gaming for the immersive effects (transporting people to worlds other than his speech-making.) Specifically due to this site.

(Don't let anyone, including KoopaTV, tell you that President Barack Hussein Obama or Attorney General Eric Himpton Holder Jr. did absolutely nothing good. Better on civil liberties than Jeff Sessions.)

But, like the bewildering and strange e-mails that KoopaTV gets in our inbox on a semi-regular basis, Jeff Sessions confused our “gaming commentary” for the gambling industry. Dude ends up going after the wrong industry, since he's an idiot. Hence, President Donald John Trump fired him. Regardless, he got this memo out as one of the last things he did, so now the United States has to live with online gambling being illegal and prosecutable by the feds. Hope the states go and sue. And win.

This wasn't supposed to happen with President Donald John Trump as president, by the way. He's supposed to be the casino mogul and be sympathetic to allowing people to live out their vices of choice. Not outlawing them.

You might be thinking, hey, I just play videogames and don't care about online gambling. (You're aware these are sibling industries, right? Just ask Konami. And Castlevania-themed pachinko aside, they're a major slot machine developer and they're pretty good at it.) You should still be concerned here about central regulatory restrictions on entertainment forms, because may I remind you that we as a videogame industry were very close to being regulated nearly out of existence for the same reported reason that the Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling is going on their crusade. (PROTECTING THE CHILDREN.)

The kids are fine. Let the adults gamble or play violent videogames. And keep Jeff Sessions away from any power, because that guy ruins everything he touches. Let's knock out that Office of Legal Counsel memorandum via the legislative branch!

...Once they stop their shutdown. Then again, if that keeps up, the Department of Justice won't be in the position to sue anyone. Civil liberties for all!


Ludwig is pissed off at the idea of being associated with idiot social conservatives who want to prevent anyone from having fun at their own expense, like online gambling. He has a big grudge against Jeff Sessions, and has been looking for any fans of Mr. Sessions for the past couple of years and hasn't been able to find any. He also put this as a Gaming Commentary article in an ironic sense, just to confuse Mr. Sessions if the Alabamian is reading this article, like Mr. Sessions saw the KoopaTV E3 2017 coverage that was sans-Sessions.