Certainly, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board has made it clear that diversity is an important element of any license application. It seems to me that all of the applicants have received this message.

The legalization or presence of gaming in one state invariably leads to calls for a response in neighboring states. These experts will examine public policy, operational challenges, regulatory issues and the critical market dynamics.

Pinnacle has been a company nibbling at the edges of the gaming industry. This acquisition quickly gets them to the industry's core with two substantial assets in the two most important U.S. markets.

Along with the mystical wonderment and sense of ecological responsibility that comes with the recognition of connectedness, more disturbing images come to mind. When applied to economics, connectedness seems to take the form of chain stores, multinational corporations, and international trade treaties which wipe out local enterprise and indigenous culture. When I think of it in the realm of religion, I envision smug missionaries who have done such a good job of convincing native people everywhere that their World-Maker is the same as God, and by this shoddy sleight of hand have been steadily impoverishing the world of the great fecundity and complex localism of belief systems that capture truths outside the Western canon. And I wonder—if everything's connected, does that mean that everything can be manipulated and controlled centrally by those who know how to pull strings at strategic places?

The question is whether it'll be a stable country, will it be a country in which a diversity of views, open transparency, women's rights are recognized. The likelihood of that remains very low.

Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. There may be legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not... with regard to abortion and euthanasia.