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It’s nice to see someone stick up for the online poker community following last Friday’s indictments of the founders of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker. This time, Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA), the Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee and internet gambling’s biggest ally on Capitol Hill, called the Department of Justice’s crackdown “an incredible waste of resources.”

Frank spoke to The Hill armed with a variety of poker references and explained that the Department of Justice should not be spending its time “protecting the public from the scourge of inside straights.” Yes, those pesky inside straights sometimes hit when we least expect them to.

Friday was a catastrophe of epic proportions for online poker players in the United States, who watched as the three largest USA-facing sites – PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and the CEREUS Network – stop taking new American players. The CEREUS Network remains open to real money action from the United States, but USA players are unable to cash out, deposit, or transfer funds.

Frank, a longtime lawmaker who has introduced a variety of pro-internet gambling bills, explained to The Hill that the U.S. Department of Justice has its priorities backwards: “Go after the people responsible for empty houses, not full houses.”

It’s not often that you see members of the same political party go after each other, but that’s exactly what happened in Frank’s interview with The Hill. Frank lashed out at the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, who is a known poker player, and argued, “I'm not saying violate the law, but to give this priority in law enforcement over some other things I think is a terrible idea and I think the administration is wrong on this.”

Many in the industry assumed that the Obama Administration’s stance towards internet gambling and online poker would be much friendlier than that of George W. Bush. However, the opposite has largely been true.

To that end, TheNuts asked Poker Players Alliance (PPA) Executive Director John Pappas why the current Department of Justice has been overtly hostile towards the online poker community. Pappas responded, “That’s a question we’re asking our players to ask Obama. It wasn’t expected from this administration. It’s more aggressive now than the Bush Administration ever was. I don’t believe that it would reflect Obama’s position on a licensed and regulated market and it is highly doubtful that Obama was advised on this before this happened.”

According to The Hill, U.S. players wagered a total of $16 billion with PokerStars, Full Tilt, and Absolute Poker in 2010. $16 billion! In part given the amount of money that could be brought in via taxation, Frank admitted that the GOP may soon come off its staunch anti-internet gambling stance: “I know the GOP is under a lot of pressure to back off on this.” Let’s hope so.

Giving his take on last week’s maelstrom of activity was gambling and the law expert I. Nelson Rose, who commented in a blog released to the media on Monday, “The DoJ has been waging a war of intimidation against internet gambling for years, successfully scaring players, operators, payment processors, and affiliates into abandoning the American market. Lacking the two essentials to any prosecution – a statute that clearly makes the activity illegal and a defendant physically present in the U.S. – the Feds have announced showy legal action against easy targets about every other year.”

Stay tuned to TheNuts for the latest on this evolving story.