Gambling and globalism.(THE LAST WORD)

Gambling is illegal in Utah, Hawaii, and a number of other states. Whether this policy is wise or whimsical, it indisputably falls within what James Madison described as the "numerous and indefinite" powers reserved to the states under the Constitution.

On April 7, the Geneva-based World Trade Organization (WTO) upheld a complaint by Antigua that state laws against gambling are an impermissible impediment to the tiny island nation's Internet gambling industry. At one point, Antigua had a reasonably robust agricultural sector, producing primarily bananas and sugar. Those industries were decimated, in large measure, because of an earlier WTO ruling. Antigua turned to gambling as a revenue source.

Last November, the WTO ruled that U.S. efforts to crack down on Internet gambling violated the General Agreement on Trade in Services, which supposedly covers not only legitimate trades, but also gambling and betting services. On April 7, the WTO's appellate body upheld the earlier ruling.

Utah state laws against gambling figured prominently in Antigua's case before the WTO. Lori Wallach of Ralph Nader's Public Citizen Global Trade Watch correctly states that the WTO's ruling in favor of Antigua represents "the place where federalism and the WTO go head-to-head in a record collision."

"If Utah can't pass laws prohibiting Internet gambling, it will have lost a large measure of its ability to define what people in this part of the country consider to be proper conduct." Complained Salt Lake City's Deseret Morning News. "That's why the Bush administration needs to demand a renegotiation of trade agreements that concern international gambling."

The Deseret News has long supported the WTO and U.S. membership in the body. But our membership in the WTO entails nullification of constitutional provisions intended to protect the reserved powers of the states. By approving the WTO pact, Congress also abdicated its constitutional power to regulate trade and commerce with foreign nations, surrendering it to an unelected, unaccountable synod of foreign bureaucrats.

"In many ways," the Deseret News opined shortly before the April 7 ruling, "Utah should have seen this coming." Indeed, it should have--and may have, had the newspaper explained the implications of U.S. membership in the WTO. Under the editorial leadership of former UN undersecretary-general John Hughes, a member of the globalist Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Deseret News has consistently promoted multilateral bodies and pacts that diminish our ...