On Sunday night, just after the CBS football game broadcast, in a brazen effort to capture the football audience, 60 Minutes aired a segment on internet gambling.

All through the game there were ads for the upcoming show.

"The government is clear, internet gambling is illegal," the ads proclaimed. "So why are millions of Americans doing it?"

The NFL and the NCAA, puritans to the core, claim that football fans don't bet. Based on the number of ad spots for the 60 Minutes gambling segment during and around the football game, apparently, CBS knows better. You didn't see all those spots during "Face the Nation" did you?

CBS knows how to capture a sports betting audience, and in this case they did it with a teaser filled with false information. Who could resist the tease? John Q. Sports Bettor is breaking the law, Peter the Poker Player, and Casey Casino are all breaking the law. If 60 Minutes says so, it must be true. Worse, if 60 Minutes knows, can the internet police be far behind. What was that I read about nothing ever being really deleted on my computer? Burn the hard drive! I swear, if I can just get out this, I'll never gamble again.

With her huge market share guaranteed that night, the thinking-man's Britney Spears, 60 Minutes own Lesley Stahl, sat there proving that she, like so many other TV news "correspondents", is nothing more than an empty-headed cute face.

Before last Sunday, Lesley Stahl was the woman of my late-night fantasies. In her 40's, she seems smart and self-assured, with all the wisdom that a combination of intelligence and maturity can bring. Unlike annoying Barbara Walters, who always reminded me of a guy in drag, Lesley Stahl is an all female sexy sweetheart. She has a great body and an even better face. Her smile is endearing. At my age, you start to appreciate beautiful women with a little maturity and intelligence. What I don't appreciate, however, is a supposed investigative TV reporter stooping to hype, instead of presenting hard-nosed investigation. It is hard-nosed, fearless investigation for which 60 Minutes is known. Lesley Stahl blew it in favor of market share, and she lacked the creativity to slant the report in a way that would be both truthful and grab the market. I may have to start fantasizing about Connie Chung.

There sat my lovely Lesley, smiling sweetly at the camera, and vacantly proclaiming all internet gambling to be illegal. The opening premise was a lie that Lesley Stahl perpetuated rather than investigated.

All internet gambling is not illegal. In fact, under federal law, no placing of bets on the internet is illegal. What is illegal under federal law is the interstate transmission, by wire, of sports information for the purposes of wagering. The law is restricted to those in the business of gambling, in other words, bookmakers.

The applicable law is called "The Wire Act." It was originally passed to shut down the horse-racing wire rooms that took bets on tracks across country and received the results by telephone or telegraph shortly after the races.

It is not internet gambling that is illegal, it is the transmission of sports information by internet bookmakers. Clearly, the internet, by definition, deals with wire connections, and the content of bookmaking web sites is information being transmitted across those wires for the purposes of wagering, but internet casinos are not involved, internet poker rooms are not involved, and the players, gamblers and sports bettors themselves are not involved.

A few states have laws prohibiting citizens from placing bets on the internet, but the vast majority of states do not. The simple fact is that, in most states, placing a bet is not illegal. That's why no one is raiding your Friday night poker game. If the police come to the door, in most jurisdictions you don't need to hide the money and cards. Betting is not illegal, although running a gambling business by cutting the pot for a profit may be illegal.

Lesley Stahl never told the viewers any of that. Instead, she said ominously, "The federal government is clear, gambling on the Internet is against the law." Lest we think she was talking about the bookmakers, Stahl continued, "And yet millions of Americans do it on hundreds of Web sites, to the tune of billions of dollars." Wrong!

You'd think an investigative reporter would have the good sense to consult a gaming lawyer before proclaiming that her audience is breaking the law. Not Lesley Stahl. Her experts on the U.S. laws were a Briton named Nigel Payne, who runs Sportingbet.com based in the United Kingdom, and J. Terrance (Terri) Lanni, the CEO of MGM/Mirage, a company that has only its own profit in mind when it says anything.

Nigel Payne may know everything there is to know about running his bookmaking business in the United Kingdom , but he is hardly an expert on U.S. law. But Nigel Payne still stopped short of calling what he does illegal. He mentioned that our friends in England give bookmakers specific permission to take bets over the internet from United States residents,. and he did concede that the U.S. does nothing at all to regulate internet gambling. Right on both counts. But in a free country, you don't need a specific law to give you permission to do something. In the absence of any law prohibiting or regulating something, you can do whatever you like.

MGM/Mirage along with other casino companies and horse racing interests spent muti-millions lobbying against internet gambling. Why? They didn't want any competition for the consumer's gambling dollars. The theory is that if you lose $100 betting on the internet, that's $100 you didn't lose in the land-based casinos or at the tracks.

The biggest problem with the current U.S. gaming industry is that it is no longer run by friends of Bugsy Siegel. Your local man would recognize instantly that the way to go would be to take over internet gambling and operate it himself. He knows gamblers. He'd immediately realize that the $100 lost on the internet might never be lost at all if not for internet gambling, and that the only way to capture that $100 is to get on the internet and grab it before the other guys do. What your local man knows instinctively, it took the new breed of casino operators years to grasp. U.S. casino companies could have dominated the internet. They blew it.

The 21 st century version of land-based casinos are run by suits, with Harvard MBA's, who never made a bet in their lives. They don't socialize with gamblers. They hang out in board rooms with other MBA's who never bet. They hire other MBA's who never made bet to run marketing studies that ask the wrong questions. They don't understand their customer.

These are the same guys who got rid of the $2.99 steak and lobster dinner at your favorite casino/hotel, and replaced it with the $14.95 salami sandwich. They think every area of the operation has to make money. They don't comprehend that if the restaurant makes more, the casino makes less.

These are the same guys who decided, based on their Harvard Business School Greed Models, that The Sands Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City should get rid of all table games, and have only higher-profit-per-square-foot slots. The gamblers deserted the Sands in droves for the places next door where they had a choice of both slots and table games. The Sands was on the verge of bankruptcy less than one year later, and put the table games back.

Internet gambling won't replace the land-based casinos anymore than liquor stores replaced the local pub. Gambling is a social activity. At home, alone, it is just a time-killer. In the atmosphere of the casino it is grand entertainment. Players love to sit in those plush chairs being served drinks by half-naked girls while watching 4 football games and a race from Hollywood Park all at the same time on huge screens in a semi-darkened, wood paneled room. It beats all hell out of sitting at your desk hoping the boss or the spouse don't come in before you're done making your bet. Internet gambling is a different activity from casino gambling.

It took the geniuses at the MGM/Mirage and their ilk an incredible 8 years, and a failed foray into internet gambling aimed only at non-US locations, to realize that their customers had been spending $10 billion dollars at other people's internet casinos. Lobbying for laws to eliminate internet gambling wasn't the answer. Both gambling and the internet are here to stay, and no law will get rid of internet gambling.

Now, after having spent many years and immense sums of money supporting anti-internet gambling bull dogs like Senator Jon Kyl (Republican, Arizona) the U.S. casino industry is having an uphill battle trying to stop the momentum they created, and turn the tide the other way.

The MGM/Mirage has every reason to want to give the internet gambler the mistaken belief he is breaking the law. John Q. Sports Bettor likes to think of himself as a law-abiding citizen. MGM still believes that if they can convince even one John Q. to stop spending his gambling dollars on the internet, he might take an extra jaunt this year to Las Vegas , or start making a twice-a-week bus ride from Philadelphia to Atlantic City . Thus, until they themselves are granted legal access to the U.S. gambler on the internet, the MGM/Mirage has every reason to falsely scare John Q. away from internet gambling. Such were the legal experts for Lesley Stahl and her 60 Minutes segment.

While bookmaking on the internet is illegal, not all internet gambling businesses are illegal. The Wire Act clearly deals only with sports betting. Casino and poker web sites are completely unregulated. To be sure, at the urging of guys like Mr. Lanni from the MGM/Mirage, the government has hinted that there may be an interpretation of the law that prohibits the transmission of information aimed at furthering all forms of gambling businesses. These hints have back-fired on the legitimate casino industry, and prevented them from risking operation on the net to U.S. citizens. Any interpretation of the Wire Act as prohibiting anything more than sports betting has never been tested in the courts. The reason is that law enforcement has done no enforcing, they've restricted themselves to hinting. The lack of enforcement stems from government's belief that any attempt to use the Wire Act against forms of gambling other than sports would not hold up in court. As a deterrent, the threat that the theory might be supported in court is better than the reality that it won't.

It is mainly local licensing regulations that keep U.S. land-based casinos off the internet. Change the federal law to regulate internet gambling, and the local rules won't matter anymore. That's why the casino industry has done an about face and begun to lobby for regulation while trying to convince John Q. that his current activity with the unregulated guys is illegal.

The question Ms. Stahl never thought to ask was: Why, if it is already illegal to gamble on the internet, has Sen. Jon Kyl been working so hard to make it illegal? Ms. Stahl passes Kyl off as someone who is merely trying to put teeth in the already existing laws. All it takes is a reading of Kyl's past proposals, and the information releases from his office, to realize that Kyl's push is not just to put teeth in an existing law. Kyl has been seeking, for years, and through several tries, to make that which not prohibited on the federal level - people gambling on the internet -- illegal in all its forms. If Sen. Jon Kyl has his way, John Q. Sports Bettor will be subject to arrest as a criminal. Kyl has been working so hard to get his legislation passed because internet gambling is not already illegal. That contradiction to the entire premise of her 60 Minutes segment flew right over the head of that poor vacant cutie pie, Lesley Stahl.

Ms. Stahl did note, in passing, that it is a law relating to sports betting on the telephone that the government is claiming prohibits all betting on the internet. That pregnant comment begs for an explanation. There was none. Any attempt by Ms. Stahl to question such claims, or to examine the bully-boy tactics such claims by our politicians represent was conspicuous by its absence.

To their shame, 60 Minutes attempted to garner an audience through sensationalism, and by pandering to the fear of their audience. They put Lesley Stahl in charge of presenting a topic she obviously knew nothing about. She feigned shock into the camera as she asked inane questions such as how, if internet gambling is illegal, the companies engaged in it can advertise openly. Duh, maybe it's not as illegal as you think, Lesley. Next, we'll see her sitting in a row boat with Geraldo Rivera, telling us how deep the flood waters have risen, while two guys wade by in galoshes.

The pity is that 60 Minutes allowed itself to be used as an outlet for the propaganda of U.S. gambling interests. When 60 Minutes tells people they are breaking the law by playing poker on the internet, the average person believes it must be true. After all, 60 Minutes wouldn't lie.

Whether or not 60 Minutes would lie, they would hype. A program telling you that 12 million people are breaking the law attracts more viewers than a program telling you that 12 million people are having fun.

With a little creativity, however, 60 Minutes could have given the show a slant that both attracted viewers and maintained the integrity of that nice Lesley Stahl. Why not make the theme "The Second Coming of Prohibition?"

It's an internet full of sports gambling speakeasies, busted only occasionally, together with more legal, but still unregulated, casinos and card rooms. That Damon Runyon world would be a truer picture of the actual situation, and just as interesting in the pre-show teasers.

In addition, why not expose the gambling industry for talking out of two sides of its face to the detriment of the public and needed regulation? Or, how about an expose about how the moral pose of our politicians was purchased with casino industry dollars?

Perhaps Lesley Stahl isn't to blame. Maybe she was never more than a pretty face, and the producers provide the investigation and content. In any case, my night-time fantasies won't be the same anymore.

When can we expect the U.S. to finally stop pretending the question is one of morality and get down to regulating internet gambling for the benefit of the consumer? The born-again Terri Lanni, CEO of MGM Mirage, says he thinks it will happen when we get "an enlightened president and an enlightened attorney general." Oh, well. Maybe in the lifetime of your great grandchildren.

Then again, nothing enlightens our politicians like money, and now that the U.S. Casino industry has done an about-face, can enlightened politicians be far behind? Senator Kyl may even see the error of his ways now that casino industry support has dried up. Who knows? Even Lesley Stahl and 60 Minutes may figure it out soon.