Wagering on vice: with government's eager help, gambling has grown from a marginal vice to a major social malady -- and government, not surprisingly, is the main beneficiary. (Culture War).

Disclosure that self-appointed "virtue czar" William J. Bennett has a large and expensive gambling habit triggered the predictable wave of "gotcha!" stories in the press. The June issue of The Washington Monthly described how Bennett has rolled up over $8 million in gambling expenditures at various casinos over the past decade. With a palpable sense of vindictive glee, the left-leaning journal cited Bennett's observation from The Book of Virtues, his best-selling collection of moral parables: "We should know that too much of anything, even a good thing, may prove to be our undoing."

For his part, Bennett insisted that his gambling habit -- while exorbitant by ...