Kentucky Fried Court Case

Ever see The Kentucky Fried Movie? All-time fave. Came out in 1977, brainchild of the same crazies who’d go on to do Airplane!, Top Secret!, and The Naked Gun. Buncha hilarious R-rated skits lampooning 70s pop culture.

Somewhere in there comes a trailer for a faux disaster flick -- in the tradition of Towering Inferno and Earthquake -- called That’s Armageddon. Came to mind sometime mid-afternoon yesterday, about the time the Dow was down 800 points for the day.

As chaos reigns and the world crumbles down around them, a man and woman at some sort of romantic crossroads try to negotiate what to do next:

Man: What are you saying?
Woman: Leave her... come back to Montana with me.
Man: I could no sooner run away from her than myself.
Woman: I’m not asking you to run, I’m asking you to face reality!
Man: Whose reality, yours or mine?
Woman: My reality AND yours, that’s whose!
Man: What are you saying?
Woman: Leave her... Come back to Montana with me!
Man: I could no sooner run away from her than myself!
Woman: I’m not asking you to run, I’m asking you to face reality!
Man: Whose reality, yours or mine?
Woman: My reality AND yours, that’s whose!
Man: What are you saying?

The trailer is only a couple of minutes long, but we come back to them again later. They’re still stuck in the same loop.

One assumes sincere efforts will be made to face reality this morning at 9:30 a.m. in a Franklin County Courthouse in Frankfort, KY. That’s when Circuit Court Judge Thomas Wingate will once again hear the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet’s argument that they should be allowed to seize 141 domains hosting online gambling sites -- including some of our favorites -- if those sites refuse to block Kentucky residents’ access. (Incidentally, a couple of sites have apparently already pulled out of Kentucky, including Goldencasino.com.)

Various others should be on hand as well to argue the opposite view that the Commonwealth of Kentucky doesn’t have jurisdiction here over the domains, and thus to allow such a seizure would be unconstitutional.

An emergency “summit” was held yesterday afternoon at the Capital Plaza Hotel in Frankfort for groups opposed to the seizure of the domains to get together to discuss today’s hearing. The summit was hosted by the Bluegrass Institute, a non-partisan group that describes itself as an “independent research and educational institution offering free-market solutions to Kentucky's most pressing problems.”

The summit brought together representatives of the Poker Players Alliance, the Internet Commerce Association, Interactive Media Entertainment & Gaming Associates, Americans for Tax Reform, among others. It is expected that these same folks will show up for this morning’s hearing, along with a lot of other interested parties, possibly including representatives of some of the online gamblinge sites currently hosted on the 141 domains in question.

I wrote a little about this attempted power play a couple of weeks ago when the news first hit. Still tend to think it would be highly unusual for this case not to be dismissed, but who knows, really?

Will be very curious to follow the news outta Frankfort today. The PPA’s “Selected Coverage of Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear’s Actions Against Internet Poker” should be a good place to go for the latest, I’m thinking.

Of course, these sort of end-of-the-world type threats seem to have been the norm for those of us who like to play online poker. For the last two years or so, anyhow. “Again?” we say, then shrug...

“That’s armageddon!”