Science & Tech Quote by Spencer Bachus

Bachus is doing what politicians do best when they want regulation: he turns a sprawling, complicated ecosystem into a clean moral emergency with a clear villain and a clear victim. The line is engineered for hearings and headlines. "Unlimited access" and "24 hours a day, seven days a week" aren’t just facts; they’re a rhetorical siren, suggesting an always-on predator and an exhausted society that can’t possibly supervise. The cadence has the feel of inevitability: if the Internet is constant, harm becomes constant too.

The subtext is less about gambling than about control and jurisdiction. By emphasizing "illegal Internet gambling sites", Bachus frames the issue as law enforcement and border defense, not personal choice or consumer protection. "Repeated exposure" borrows the logic of addiction and advertising - the idea that proximity equals corruption - which conveniently shifts responsibility away from institutions that might profit from gambling in other forms and toward a faceless digital underworld. He’s also carving out the most sympathetic constituency: minors and students. Adults who gamble are complicated; kids who "fall victim" are politically simple.

Context matters: mid-2000s panic around the newly mainstream Internet, paired with legislative fights over online gambling restrictions and the growing influence of payment processors and offshore operators. The phrase "by the thousands" is deliberately elastic - big enough to alarm, vague enough to survive scrutiny. It’s not a data point; it’s a permission slip for intervention.