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The most basic principle to being a free American is the notion that we as individuals are responsible for our own lives and decisions. We do not have the right to rob our neighbors to make up for our mistakes, neither does our neighbor have any right to tell us how to live, so long as we aren’t infringing on their rights. Freedom to make bad decisions is inherent in the freedom to make good ones. If we are only free to make good decisions, we are not really free.

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Work on federal regulations to enforce an Internet gambling ban should stop, four lawmakers said in letters this week to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

“Given the many other priorities that are pending at your agencies, including the mortgage crisis … we believe it would be imprudent for you to devote additional agency resources to this Sisyphean task,” the lawmakers wrote. Sisyphus was a king in Greek mythology who was condemned to repeatedly roll a huge boulder up a hill only to watch it roll down again.

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The banking industry is cheering a fresh assault on the 2006 federal crackdown on Internet gambling by an unlikely duo: House Financial Services panel Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).

Frank has teamed up with the libertarian-minded Paul, who crusaded against big government during his recent White House bid, on legislation to block that law by forbidding federal officials from writing rules to implement it.

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