By Scott Wright

The United States Congress, which should be worried about conducting oversight on the man history will someday surely record as the most constitutionally challenged and fiscally unfit president in the history of this country, seems to be spending an inordinate amount of time these days worrying about how I spend my leisure hours.

I'm about to tell you plenty about what's wrong in Washington, but don't take my word for it. Take former Republican Rep. Newt Gingrich's. Last week, the Georgia native told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute that this Congress “really has to think about how fundamentally wrong the current system is.” He went on to lecture his former coworkers that “it's important to have an informed, independent legislative branch coming to grips with this reality and not sitting around waiting for presidential leadership.”

Tell it like it is, Brother Newt. He's talking about the fact that we've got 2,500 dead American soldiers (and counting) from a war that should never have taken place and this Congress refuses to hold anyone responsible for the lies that got us into it. He's referring to a few weeks ago when Congress passed a resolution practically accusing the New York Times of treason for exposing an unclassified spying operation (and in the process warning Americans their privacy may be suffering from a constitutionally illegal invasion), at the same time no one in the House of Representatives wanted to investigate why Bush administration staffer Karl Rove gleefully exposed the name of an undercover CIA agent to newspaper reporter Robert Novak.

Newt's also talking about the recent revelation that it was the Bush administration that cranked up another constitutionally questionable spy program that taps into our phone lines, and that Bush and Co. are running a POW camp in Cuba that, until last week, violated the basic tenets of the Geneva Convention and still makes the president's “we stand for freedom and democracy” spiel sound like a bunch of hypocritical hogwash to the rest of the world.

I could rattle off a couple dozen more of the specific horrifics I thought of when I first read Gingrich's words last week, all of them detailing the dereliction of this Congress regarding its duty to oversee the presidency of George W. Bush. But I'm tired of thinking about them, so let's skip ahead to the newest reason for my despair with the barrel-full of monkeys that is the current U.S. Congress: They're trying to take away my nightly poker game.

Have you heard about this? Last Tuesday, a lopsided majority in the House of Representatives passed a Republican-written bill that would put an end to gambling on the Internet. The ban, little more than an attempt to appeal to conservative voters in an election year, would make it illegal for banks and credit card companies to make payments to most online gambling sites -- most, but not all. No legislation from this Congress would look right without a few loopholes scattered around the bottom of the final pages. In this instance, a few congressional good ole' boys got together with their lobbyist friends and (wink-wink) wrote in a dandy little exclusion for lotteries and horse racing. See how worried our representatives really are about gambling?

I admit, on the scale of Despicable Congressional Deceit, the gambling loophole doesn't rate very high next to lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Rep. Tom DeLay colluding a few years ago to block attempts to close sweatshops and end the teenage sex slave trade in the Northern Mariana Islands, but it proves beyond a doubt how phony and farcical this entire anti-gambling effort really was. In fact, in a Reuters story about the legislation, a consultant who opposed the bill claimed it was, despite appearances, practically useless. “This will not stop Internet gambling at all,” said Frank Catania.

Then why bother? So Republicans could pander to their base constituency, of course.

Naturally, proponents of the legislation gave other, more moralistic reasons. According to Reuters, supporters of the ban “cited examples of college students and other young people whose lives were ruined after they became addicted to Internet gambling.”

So what? My friend Doug is addicted to chocolate and hamburgers, and they're slowly making him overweight to the point that it's probably not good for his health. Is Congress going to ban Hershey's chocolate? Shutter every last Hardee's in the country? If so many of those out-of-control online gamblers are college students then they ought to be pretty sharp intellectually, so I say let them figure out a way to deal with their own problems without getting the government involved. Congress didn't mind cutting scholarship money for those same students out of the most recent federal budget in order to give rich folks a tax cut, so why would they care if a few thousand young Americans max out their daddy's credit cards?

Figure it out yet? They don't care! They just want to get reelected.

Look, I don't mean to be insensitive to the plight of people who suffer from an addiction. Goodness knows, none of us is totally immune to that affliction. But gambling isn't illegal in most of this country, I'm not addicted (at least, not yet), and it doesn't make any sense to eliminate something that a lot of people enjoy just because a few overindulge. If Congress tried this fix for everything someone did too much of, all we'd have left to occupy our time would be exercise, eating our vegetables, and getting a good night's sleep.

Kill me now.

Some of the supporters of the legislation claim they're trying to keep gambling out of the hands of minors. Well, no one wants kids playing with handguns, either, and I live in a state where it's a hell of a lot easier to buy a .38 revolver and a handful of bullets than sit down inside a casino. So, concerned congressmen, where's the legislation banning the sale of firearms?

Uh-huh. Didn't think so. So how about leaving my poker game alone? I'd be a lot more inclined to vote for you if you'd keep your nose out of my personal business.

Or perhaps if you spent more time making sure my constitutional rights aren't being violated by the NSA? Or maybe asking the president why we're losing young men and women in the sands of Iraq with no plan to get them home? How about investigating why this administration is feeding tens of billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to a company formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney?

Spend what little time you are actually on the job making sure my grandma can afford her medicines, or doing something -- anything -- about the millions of people who are in this country illegally. There's plenty of stuff that needs fixing besides the only online pastime I have that helps me relax after an afternoon spent feeling the way I feel after I write a column like this one.

Folks, this GOP-led Congress isn't doing any of the things it should be doing -- they know it, you know it, I know it, Gingrich knows it -- and they're afraid their lassitude will mean trouble with voters come November. Still, instead of setting out to perform the tasks they've been neglecting for years, instead of doing what we're paying them $165,000 a year to do, they'd rather gamble themselves, on a little “poker is bad” legislation. Maybe, they hope, for a few minutes on election day, their conservative base will forget what a horrible job they're doing and send enough of them back to Washington so that they'll be able maintain their majority and get busy getting themselves reelected the next time around.

Maybe this week's column is self-serving -- OK, I'm sure it is -- but no matter what portion of the current partisan political escapades makes you realize there's something very wrong with our government these days, that fact remains. These dingleberries got their chance, and it appears they're well along the way to blowing it, Hindenburg-style.

It's time for our representatives to quit worrying about my poker game and start worrying the important things. Otherwise, I hope that, come November, a majority of voters will tell them it's time to cram their self-serving hands back into their pockets, count their chips, and go home.

Scott Wright is a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and an award-winning member of the Society of Professional Journalists. He is a native of Cherokee County.