Pentagon Papers lawyer has new passion: freeing poker players from tyranny

A Harvard Law School professor famous for defending the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers and helping Julia Roberts sue chemical companies in “A Civil Action” has finally decided to do something important with his life: Make poker an honest pastime.

I’m all in on this one.

According to this morning’s Boston Herald:

Charles Nesson wants governments to relax restrictions on poker players. He has formed the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society with some of his students to promote poker as a fun learning tool and to redefine it as a game of skill, rather than a game of chance.

"I’d like to (legitimize) poker as an educational instrument," Nesson said. "It’s a great way to learn and practice the skills of seeing what things look like from another person’s point of view."

The group is especially interested in getting the federal government to give up its asinine and certainly futile insistence on criminalizing online poker.

Not since the emergence of Al D’Amato, Online Freedom Fighter, has the pro-poker movement picked up such an important ally.

By the way, don’t be looking for a lot of posts here Monday: I’ll be driving an hour-and-a-half from puritanical Massachusetts to enlightened Connecticut in order to play in a poker tournament at Foxwoods Casino.

Paul McNamara
Network World

News Added: 31 October, 2007

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