A CUP OF JO: Motherhood Mondays: Mouse Ear Top Knots

This month, we've featured back-to-school hair tutorials for girls every Monday. My friend Reagan of Hairdresser on Fire was our hair stylist, and, here, Sohji was our beautiful model. Here are Reagan's steps for mouse-ear top knots (and the sweetest photos)...
Little girls with bobs melt me. The only problem is that it can be hard to style such short hair! Sohji's mouse ear topknots are a great way to have some variety.

Prep: you'll want to comb out any tangles. You'll just need two elastics (I like Goody's clear ones) and some ribbon to jazz it up.

1. Create two equal sections at the top of the head. I like to follow the natural parting as much as possible on children.

2. Take your first section firmly in your hands and begin twisting it tightly. (Not too tight if she's tender headed!)

3. Continue to twist the section until it coils around itself like a little bun. Some hairs might pop out, but just go with it! What makes the style so sweet is that it's playful and spunky.

4. Secure with an elastic and repeat on the other side.

5. Add a ribbon or clip if you fancy.
Sohji, Stella and our adorable hair stylist herself. Thank you, Reagan! xoxo

P.S. And grown-up hair tutorials...

(Photos by Alpha Smoot for A Cup of Jo. Hair by Reagan Baker. Styling by Kendra Smoot. Clothing credits: Jean jacket from GAP, mini backpack by Fjallraven)

Source: http://joannagoddard.blogspot.com/2012/10/motherhood-mondays-mouse-ear-top-knots.html

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Marine plants can flee to avoid predators

Monday, October 1, 2012

Scientists at the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography have made the first observation of a predator avoidance behavior by a species of phytoplankton, a microscopic marine plant. Susanne Menden-Deuer, associate professor of oceanography, and doctoral student Elizabeth Harvey made the unexpected observation while studying the interactions between phytoplankton and zooplankton.

Their discovery will be published in the September 28 issue of the journal PLOS ONE.

"It has been well observed that phytoplankton can control their movements in the water and move toward light and nutrients," Menden-Deuer said. "What hasn't been known is that they respond to predators by swimming away from them. We don't know of any other plants that do this."

While imaging 3-dimensional predator-prey interactions, the researchers noted that the phytoplankton Heterosigma akashiwo swam differently in the presence of predators, and groups of them shifted their distribution away from the predators.

In a series of laboratory experiments, Menden-Deuer and Harvey found that the phytoplankton not only flee when in the presence of the predatory zooplankton, but they also flee when in water that had previously contained the predators. They found only a minimal effect when the phytoplankton were exposed to predators that do not feed on phytoplankton.

"The phytoplankton can clearly sense the predator is there. They flee even from the chemical scent of the predator but are most agitated when sensing a feeding predator," said Menden-Deuer.

When the scientists provided the phytoplankton with a refuge to avoid the predator ? an area of low salinity water that the predators cannot tolerate ? the phytoplankton moved to the refuge.

The important question these observations raise, according to Menden-Deuer, is how these interactions affect the survival of the prey species.

Measuring survival in the same experiments, the researchers found that fleeing helps the alga survive. Given a chance, the predators will eat all of the phytoplankton in one day if the algae have no safe place in which to escape, but they double every 48 hours if they have a refuge available to flee from predators. Fleeing makes the difference between life and death for this species, said Menden-Deuer.

"One of the puzzling things about some phytoplankton blooms is that they suddenly appear," she said. "Growth and nutrient availability don't always explain the formation of blooms. Our observation of algal fleeing from predators is another mechanism for how blooms could form. Amazingly, looking at individual microscopic behaviors can help to explain a macroscopic phenomenon."

The researchers say there is no way of knowing how common this behavior is or how many other species of phytoplankton also flee from predators, since this is the first observation of such a behavior.

"If it is common among phytoplankton, then it would be a very important process," Menden-Deuer said. "I wouldn't be surprised if other species had that capacity. It would be very beneficial to them."

In future studies, she hopes to observe these behaviors in the ocean and couple it with genetic investigations.

###

University of Rhode Island: http://www.uri.edu

Thanks to University of Rhode Island for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

This press release has been viewed 19 time(s).

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/123989/Marine_plants_can_flee_to_avoid_predators

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Egypt's Mubarak in critical condition

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The battleship USS Iowa, a storied vessel that served during World War Two and the Cold War, made a brief final voyage on Saturday to its permanent berth at the Port of Los Angeles, where it will open as a naval museum next month. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and U.S. Navy veterans who??

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ATF: Curbside Trash Is Not the Proper Means to Dispose of a Rocket Launcher—Unless It's Unloaded [Guns]

Is the guided missile launcher of yours taking up too much space in your home? No worries! Turns out, you don't even need to recycle it. Hosuton PD and the ATF were summoned to the Kingwood neighborhood in Houston after residents discovered a rocket launcher set out with the curbside trash. More »

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New Asteroid Mining Company May Solve World's Economic Problems [Space]

This Tuesday, a group of billionaires and former NASA scientists will announce Planetary Resources Inc., the first asteroid mining company in history. They claim they will "add trillions of dollars to the global GDP" and "help ensure humanity's prosperity." More »

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Katy Perry and Robert Ackroyd: New Couple Alert?

Baptiste Giabiconi was so February.

It seems like Katy Perry is wasting no time playing the field splitting from husband Russell Brand. Her latest reported love interest? Florence + the Machine guitarist Robert Ackroyd, who was holding hands with her at Coachella last weekend.

Here's them on the way to see her BFF Rihanna and Calvin Harris:

She also reportedly called him her "boyfriend" too, according to reports.

"Backstage at the Artist Lounge at Coachella last weekend, Katy kept saying her boyfriend was the guitar player for Florence + the Machine," a source says.

"Then later, he and a bunch of friends were supposed to go see Dr. Dre together, but Katy said she was waiting to watch her 'boyfriend' perform!"

Ackroyd also tweeted, "Best Coachella ever. Scratch that, best weekend ever. Dre, Snoop, Pac, Nate, Fiddy & KP." So clearly he's into her in some way!

What do you think? New couple alert? And do they make a cute one?

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Personal Injury Lawyer Tips Get For Consider | Law Practice Blog

Friday, April 20th, 2012 at 4:03 am ?

Perhaps you have stumbled upon any personal injury circumstances? They?re critical and a lot turn out associated with quite vital medical problems as well as issues, some tend to be actually dangerous naturally. Because of this occasion, you?ll need your individual dependable personal injury lawyer whom may help you to get your end of any insurance money and make certain that you could always be paid out with techniques which might be by law probable. Because of this to operate, you should bear in mind a few important factors and operations, and make sure that you will get the best sort of Legal Assistance for your make a difference.

Key point that you need to bear in mind would be that the lawyer you are planning to employ can be exclusively specialized in personal injury statements instances and possesses a good reputation in doing so. Because by doing this; an experienced and also reputable personal injury lawyer can look at the amount of damages that will resulted from your injury and also vis-?-vis determine the correct compensation in your finish.

Yet another thing that should be deemed is the attorney?s selection of knowledge and up to date expertise in facilitating injury insurance boasts and perhaps on just about any features related to it. Also, in terms of expertise, ensure that the actual personal injury lawyer that you can become hiring has direct knowledge and data when controling large Insurance companies and companies in order that he or she can ensure you get the money that you deserve. This is crucial because there are a number of situations that your particular legal professional must speak with the particular insurance companies because they search for approaches to cover your money.

Another thing that needs to be regarded as is the amount of true courtroom situations that your legal professional has managed. This specific ?courtroom? encounter is critical because its not all settlements are usually decided relating to the litigants as well as the insurance companies. Many of them should be delivered to courtroom for ultimate selections. The attorney a person employ must have a high successful rate pertaining to his clientele. These kinds of features are very important to ensure the personal injury insurance boasts that you just submitted is going to be present in your own prefer.

Yet another component that you need to understand along with remember, that this arena of Personal Injury is basically extensive and it could vary from mishaps for you to healthcare falsities. In summary your solicitor?s principal task is to make certain you is going to be paid out for just about any of the accidents from the insurance business.

Filed under: Injury Lawyer

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The Humble Origins of the HTML Blink Tag [The Internet]

Lou Montulli was one of the first people to work on the Netscape web browser, which gave birth to many of the venerable (and likely deprecated) web standards some of us grew up with. And if not for him, the much despised (or maybe loved) HTML Blink tag may never have existed. This is his story. More »

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'Earliest Christian Artifact' Just Random Squiggles, Scholars Argue

A 2,000-year-old box that is being lauded as the earliest Christian artifact ever found has been misconstrued, according to several scholars who were not involved in the box's discovery. They say the evidence of the box ? engraved in Jerusalem mere decades after Jesus' death ? being Christian is extremely frail, and a case of finding meaning in random squiggles.

Known as the Jonah ossuary (the term for a box made to hold human remains), the artifact is in a sealed tomb dated to before 70 A.D., which is located below an apartment building in Jerusalem. James Tabor of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and his team recently used a remote-controlled robotic camera to explore the tomb, and discovered an engraving on the ossuary that Tabor says proves it is the earliest known Christian artifact. The robotic exploration of the tomb ? and the historic find that resulted from it ? are detailed in a new documentary for the Discovery Channel called "The Jesus Discovery."

Tabor and his team say the ossuary is engraved with a picture of a fish with a stick figure in its mouth. Upon seeing the engraving, they immediately realized the stick figure must be Jonah, the Old Testament prophet whose story of being swallowed by a whale was embraced byearly followers of Jesus. If it really is a picture of Jonah and the whale, this would prove the ossuary was Christian. However, when the team published their analysis, outside experts said the depiction was not an upside-down whale swallowing a man at all, but rather a right-side-up funerary monument.?

In response to that criticism, James Charlesworth, professor of New Testament language and literature at the Princeton Theological Seminary and a member of the ossuary's discovery team, has retaliated with what he says is new and better proof that the box is Christian: The "stick figure" in the "fish's mouth" is not just a stick figure, but also Hebrew letters that spell "YONAH," the Hebrew name of Jonah.?[Images of the Jonah Ossuary]

Jonah, Jesus or Yo Yo Ma?

Skeptics are calling the new claim "Rorschach test archaeology." Steve Caruso, a professional translator who analyzes inscriptions on ancient artifacts for antiquity dealers, said Charlesworth's interpretation of the inscription is "more of an exercise in reading tea leaves."

Robert Cargill, assistant professor of classics and religious studies at the University of Iowa, concurs. "One must do some rather?strenuous mental gymnastics?to arrive at the letters for the name of Jonah in this image, including ignoring lines that are clearly present but do not fit the desired inscription, joining together lines that are clearly not conjoined, reshaping letters, and eliminating any semblance of linear alignment," Cargill says on his blog.

If all those adjustments are permissible when interpreting ancient text, the lines in the inscription can be made to spell out anything from "Jesus" to "Yo Yo Ma," the scholars note. [Poll: Do You Believe in God?]

Random squiggles

On top of the fact that several lines must be ignored to read the inscription as YONAH, the second supposed letter in the series, which Charlesworth claims is the Hebrew letter nun (shaped like a backwards L), appears to be two unconnected lines rather than one unbroken line. "This is not a nun; it is two random lines," wrote Mark Goodacre, associate professor of New Testament at Duke University. On his academic blog, Goodacre explains that it was common for the bases of funerary monuments (which, he believes, this part of the engraving depicts, instead of a fish's head) to be decorated with geometric designs, which could easily be represented with the lines in the image.

The skeptics also point out that the discovery team's own photos, released before Charlesworth and Tabor began claiming the inscription says "YONAH," clearly show two unconnected lines rather than a backwards L-shape representing "nun." Tabor has since released a different picture of the inscription in which the "nun" appears to be unbroken, and has addressed the controversy thus: "The 'nun' is not broken. There are some white splotches on the ossuary surface in our close up photos and one of them is at the juncture, which might make it look like the line is broken, but it does intersect."

The discrepancy between the photos raises further skepticism about the discovery. "Each photograph of the supposed 'inscription' seems to paint a different picture, and since the beginning of this debacle a disconcerting number of photographs have been found to be filtered, altered, or mislabeled," Caruso told?Life's Little Mysteries.

Charlesworth did not reply to requests for comment.

A year ago, during Easter season, another claim surfaced about the discovery of an early Christian artifact ? that time, lead books containing references to Jesus ? and?Caruso and others also decisively proved those to be fakes. As Kimberley Bowes, an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania, said at the time, "Modern people's urge to find material evidence from the first two centuries of Christianity is much stronger than the actual evidence itself. This is because the numbers of Christians from this period was incredibly small ? probably less than 7,000 by 100 A.D. ? and because they didn't distinguish themselves materially from their Jewish brethren."

"It does seem that every Easter there is some 'big discovery,'" Caruso added. "Mostly it's film makers or other sensationalists trying to strike while the iron is hot during the season where everyone is rather Jesus-focused. [The discovery of a] very early, relatively undisturbed tomb in and of itself is fascinating; however, a generic first century Jewish tomb doesn't quite sell.'"

Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover. Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @llmysteries?and?join us on?Facebook.

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Westchester Filmmaker's Documentary Premieres at Tribeca Film ...

Jeremy Newberger, of Yorktown, along with two fellow area filmmakers will have their documentary film about controversial TV talk show host Morton Downey, Jr. premiere at the?Tribeca Film Festival?today.?

?vocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie will be among the select films to be shown in New York City at the sold out April 19 premiere at 6 p.m., and will also be screened on April 21 (4 p.m.), April 24 (3 p.m.) and April 27 (5:30 p.m.)

"It's exciting,"?Newberger said. "It's a big moment when you've worked on something for four years."?

Newberger, the CEO of the Garrison-based?Ironbound Films, made the film with co-directors Seth Kramer of Red Hook, Daniel A. Miller of Cold Spring.?

Morton Downey, Jr., a singer and songwriter who started his career in radio, became a popular talk show host in the 1980s. The success of his talk show?The Morton Downey Jr. Show made him a pop culture celebrity. He is best known as a "chain smoking" and "screaming" arguer. He?died in?2001.

"We wanted it to be a real look into his mind,"?Newberger said of the 90-minute film. "Show the populist entertainer and his motivations, what made him tick, what affects it had on his personal life when putting on that role."

The three filmmakers, who grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey and Long Island, watched the?The Morton?Downey?Jr. Show?as teenagers in the late 80s.?They were the young impressionable generation,?Newberger said, that was "eating it up" and having conversations about issues they otherwise might not have discussed if it wasn't for?Downey?Jr.

The 80s sensation,?Newberger said,?is the precursor of today's talking heads on Fox News as well as screaming Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.?

To create ?vocateur, the filmmakers got a hold of old tapes that were kept in storage by Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman ? the man who created the The Morton?Downey?Jr. Show. They interviewed?Downey?Jr.'s friends and family to tell the story of his life on and off camera and give people a sense of who he was.?

"I'm really thrilled with how the film came out," Newberger?said.

The filmmakers hope the audience will figure out why such populist entertainers are so magnetic and then understand their importance. Their?past documentaries include two Emmy Award nominated films ??The New Recruits, which?aired on PBS?and?The Linguists, which which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.?

Newberger, who lives in Yorktown with his wife Michele and their two kids, Samson and Annabelle, has also worked as a producer and on-air contributor to the?Imus in the Morning?television program on MSNBC.?

For tickets to the ?vocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie?screening and more information call?866-941-3378 or visit?www.tribecafilm.com.

Click on the video above to watch the official trailer of??vocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie.

__

Do you like Patch? "Like" us on?Facebook?and join the conversation there. Thank you for reading!

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Mystery Killer Preying on Vietnamese Youth [Medicine]

A mysterious illness that begins as a high fever with little appetite and spreads to a rash on the hands and feet is responsible for the loss of 17 lives, so far, in an impoverished Vietnamese district. 171 others have also been sickened but have been able to recover with proper and timely medical care. More »

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Red Letter Edition - WEEKDAYS 04/10 by TRI Communications ...

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Gleek Out! The 10 Greatest Celeb Cameos on 'Glee'

Glee is back on April 10 after a winter hiatus! From Britney Spears to Neil Patrick Harris, take a look at the show’s hottest cameos

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States and Feds Race to Get Internet Gaming Legislation; Indian ...

Gaming experts have an urgent message for indigenous leaders: Federal legislation to legalize online gaming is coming, and if you want to protect Indian country interests, you need to get your strategy in place now.

The clock is ticking toward the lame-duck sessions of Congress in the crucial weeks after the presidential election this November. Experts say that?s when there will be the greatest risk?and greatest opportunity?for the nations, because that?s when legislation is most likely to be pushed through. During such a session at the end of 2010, Washington was abuzz over Sen. Harry Reid?s (D-Nevada) efforts to attach an online poker bill to a must-pass appropriations bill. Reid?s proposal would have harmed Indian gaming tribes and given a huge advantage to some of his biggest backers in the commercial gaming industry in Nevada. After a groundswell of opposition from the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), Reid backed down.

Reid?s bill would have hurt tribal gaming and tribal sovereignty by, among other things, imposing federal taxes on tribal governments that operate internet poker and separating the gaming operator from the gaming regulator, thereby limiting the tribal government?s role and authority. Perhaps the most bizarre provision would have excluded any tribe earning less than five percent of total U.S. gaming revenue from participating in the initial launching of Internet gaming, cutting dozens of small Indian casinos out of the market.

The buzz about Internet gaming legislation has quieted to whispers in D.C. lately, but the issue is still very much alive, says Tom Rodgers, a Blackfeet Nation citizen and owner of Carlyle Consulting, a lobbying firm that represents Indian tribes. ?This is the quiet before the storm,? he says. ?Our job representing Indian country is to be prepared, and even though it?s as quiet as a Sunday morning now, the storm is coming and if you?re not prepared, if you?re not informed and if you haven?t done your due diligence and worked through all the permutations, unintended consequences and the collateral damage, then you haven?t done your job.? The worst possible collateral damage, he says, is that tribes would be completely shut out of the market if they aren?t ready to negotiate. Being ready means knowing in advance what needs to be included in any online gaming legislation in order to protect tribal interests.

Once the tribes have the answers they need on how best to protect Indian country, the next step is to engage in the political process. ?What are you doing to carry your message to the people running for office?? Rodgers says. ?Are you reminding those already there of their obligations to support Indian country? Indian country can influence the vote in a lot of places and may even be dispositive in several states. What are you doing about getting out the vote?? He says the best approach is for all of Indian country to reach a consensus and act in unity, and that strategy is best achieved through large tribal organizations like the NCAI and the National Indian Gaming Association (NIGA).

Internet gaming was again a hot topic this year at NIGA?s annual trade show and convention April 1 to 4 in San Diego. In October 2010, NIGA adopted the following set of principles, stating that federal internet gaming legislation must:

? Protect the right of sovereign Indian governments to operate, regulate, tax and license Internet gaming without subordination to any nonfederal authority;

? Uphold the right of Indian governments to authorize Internet gaming to customers anywhere that such gaming is not criminally prohibited;

? Protect federal law and policy exempting tribal revenues from taxation;

? Respect existing tribal government rights under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) and tribal-state compacts;

? Protect IGRA from being opened for amendments;

? Provide positive economic benefits for Indian country.

At a recent Internet gaming conference, California Tribal Business Alliance Chairwoman Leslie Lohse (Paskenta Band of Nomlaki Indians of California) urged tribe leaders to engage in the process. ?It is critical?no, I would say incumbent upon?tribal leaders to weigh in on the legislative proposals now to ensure that there are no foreseeable negative consequences that may undermine and compromise the inherent rights of tribal governments.?

Rand (left) and Light think legislation will go beyond IGRA, so now is a good time for tribes to start diversifing.

Additionally, tribal leaders need to consider a number of issues and answer several questions in order to be prepared to help shape the federal legislation that will impact Indian country. Rodgers suggests the following topics of discussion:

? Tribes should have the right to offer online gaming even if a state ?opts out? of the federal regulatory scheme;

? Should tribes support the National Indian Gaming Commission as their continuing partner in regulating Indian gaming rather than another agency that?s unfamiliar with tribal gaming?

? There should be a common start date for online gaming for commercial and Indian gaming so that no operator gets the unfair advantage of being first and glomming the biggest market share;

? Internet cafes should be prohibited from online gaming;

? How will revenue from Internet gaming be allocated?

? How will revenues be allocated if a tribe enters a partnership with a big commercial gaming brand?

? What are the implications for world trade and its regulations in terms of taxes and revenue sharing if a tribe partners with businesses off shore, in Europe or beyond?

? How will tribal-state compacts play into online gaming regulations?

The issue of tribal-state compacts will be crucial. At a recent forum, Connecticut Governor Daniel P. Malloy, tribal officials from Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun (the two largest casinos in the country) and representatives of the Connecticut Lottery met to explore the prospect of online gambling and create a strategy to deal with mounting competition both in brick-and-mortar casinos in surrounding states and online gaming. ?Internet gaming is going to come to the United States,? Malloy said, according to a Global Gaming Business report. ?The tribes, the lottery, we?re all trying to figure this out together.?

One of the issues to resolve is the tribal-state gaming compacts signed in the 1990s with the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, owner of Foxwoods, and the Mohegan Tribe. Both tribes give 25 percent of their slot revenues to the state, and both insist that Connecticut would have to renegotiate that deal if the state intends to implement online gaming. Mohegan Chairman Bruce ?Two Dogs? Bozsum wants the governor to allow the tribes to take charge of Connecticut?s online enterprise. It?s also an area that Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Council Chairman Rodney Butler is exploring. ?There?s been a lot of talk about [Internet gambling] lately,? Butler says. ?Nothing is certain. It?s something we?re interested in and studying. We need to know more from the state before we start forming assumptions. The financial values people are placing on it vary widely. You have to be first to market to make it a success.?

The urgency for tribes to be informed about and prepared for any online gaming legislation was sparked by the dramatic change in the landscape since December, when the Department of Justice released a legal opinion that the 1961 Wire Act prohibits online betting only for sporting events and contests, not lotteries and other gaming. This ruling was suspect for at least two reasons: the Justice Department?s sudden reversal of an opinion it had held for decades and the fact that the opinion was completed in September, but not released until December. ?The reason for the delay is unclear, but the results are very clear,? says Joe Valandra, a citizen of the Sicangu Lakota and principal owner and president of VAdvisors, LLC, chairman and chief executive officer of Tehan Woglake, Inc., and former chief of staff of the National Indian Gaming Commission. ?I believe it was hoped that this would be enough to push federal legislation over the top?using the floodgates argument?very similar to that used to produce the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.?

IGRA followed the U.S. Supreme Court?s 1987 decision in California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, which affirmed the right of sovereign tribal nations to conduct gaming in Indian country. Believing that the decision opened the floodgates to unregulated Indian gaming, Congress rushed to enact IGRA the following year?a bill that both recognizes tribal sovereignty and paradoxically restricts it by giving states control over certain gaming regulations and the extent of gaming played on Indian lands. It also allows states to get a cut of Indian gaming?s profits through compacts.

Reid and the head of a powerful online lobbying group made comments recently that support Valandra?s floodgates theory. When asked to comment on the Justice Department?s new opinion, GamblingCompliance reported that Reid said, ?It?ll give us an incentive to get something done. We cannot have a series of laws around the country related to [Internet] gaming. I know a lot about gaming. I?m a former chairman of the Nevada [Gaming] Commission, and I think it?s very important that we have a national law.? His comments indicate that lawmakers realize 2012 is the time either to pass a federal online gaming bill or be caught on the sidelines as some states enact regulations on their own.

The site also quoted John Pappas, executive director of the Poker Players Alliance, responding to Reid?s comments. ?It?s very positive that someone like Reid is openly talking about the need to get this done this year,? Pappas said. ?We?re hoping we can transfer words into law. It?s preferable for the players, for the business side of things, to have some clear and consistent standards across 50 states instead of a patchwork of state laws and activities that would be legal in one place but illegal somewhere else.?

The states are now moving?some say frantically rushing?to adopt laws and regulations that will enable them to be ?first? in the market, Valandra said. ?This will clearly bolster the floodgates argument. In addition, former FBI director Louis Freeh and former Homeland Security director Tom Ridge are now leading an argument that federal legislation is needed to address law enforcement issues only the feds can address,? Valandra said.

The Justice Department opinion has indeed sparked a feeding frenzy among cash-hungry states looking to bolster revenues in the face of big budget deficits. By the end of February, a dozen states had either passed or proposed legislation for online gaming, according to Global Gaming Business magazine.

Other states also may not wait for the lame-duck session to enact legislation, Kathryn Rand and Steve Light said. They are the founders and co-directors of the Institute for the Study of Tribal Gaming Law and Policy, a component of the Northern Plains Indian Law Center at the University of North Dakota School of Law. Rand is the dean and Floyd B. Sperry professor of law at the University of North Dakota School of Law; Light is associate professor of political science and public administration at the university. ?Legalization will happen?it?s just a matter of when, and most folks believe nothing will happen at the fed level until the election sorts out,? they say. ?We think fed legalization is likely to be best for tribes, because of uniformity and more likely respect for sovereignty. But states may not wait for the presidential election.? The pressure here is economic.? Rand and Light think it?s ?highly likely? that tribal online gaming will ?push Indian gaming beyond IGRA, so we expect to see a legal and regulatory evolution of tribal gaming, with different policy goals than IGRA focused on.?

But neither federal nor state legislation will focus on tribes or tribal sovereignty, the partners warned. ?Instead, the likely main focus will be regulation and taxation. That spurred our encouragement to tribes to think about how online gaming could serve tribal policy goals.? And not all tribes are poised to take advantage of the looming legalization, they said. ?Those with recognizable brands and technological and regulatory capacity are in the best position, leaving behind the same tribes that have modest brick-and-mortar operations.? The partners predict that online gaming will exacerbate the divisions that exist between the financially successful gaming tribes and the less successful. Their advice: ?Time to diversify!?

NIGA Chairman Ernie Stevens Jr. says, ?whatever legislation has been rolled out so far does not meet what we believe are the appropriate standards for dealing with sovereign tribal government. [We] continue to be disregarded to a large extent?and then they wonder why we stand in opposition to their proposals. We?re not opposed to progress, we?re not opposed to technology and helping our economies, but as long as people make proposals without the appropriate respect to tribal governments, we have a huge problem with that.?

In their rush to expand from lotteries to casino gaming online, many states have left behind their former ?moral objections? to gaming. The double standard is not lost on the experts. ?States are rational actors in the worst way possible. They?re so broke that when they see novel revenue sources, they almost can?t help themselves. They clearly can?t reduce costs effectively, and we taxpayers have nothing left to give. New money is about the only option they have left,? says Anthony Broadman, an attorney a partner in Galanda Broadman, a firm specializing in Native American and gaming law. Broadman predicts that the moral objection arguments will arise in future political campaigns. ?Certainly that?s been the pattern. Whether you?re morally opposed to gambling or not, states have been sanctioning games for decades through horse racing, card rooms, lotteries.?

Broadman thinks tribal gaming is likely to be more respected in federal legislation as opposed to ?simply surviving through whatever carved out space exists in the states? patchwork.? But whatever approach tribes take toward the opportunities presented by online gaming?whether it?s lobbying Congress, litigating with states or just venturing out into the cyberspace marketplace, ?it?s going to take a fight,? Broadman says.

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