MORE BROKEN PROMISES AND SHADED TRUTHS

Recent days have brought the unwelcome news to Missourians that the casinos we were told would be "riverboat" in nature -- most of which aren't on our rivers and don't traverse their waters -- will now be able to stay open shaking people loose from their money literally around the clock. For this small favor we have the Missouri Gambling Commission to thank. Make that no thanks.

The decision to go to round-the-clock gambling now takes its place alongside a host of other broken promises or shaded truths we have been told about an industry that didn't exist in this state prior to 1993. As indicated above, riverboat gambling was sold to Missourians in the industry-backed initiative campaign of 1992 on a pledge of excursion boats, evoking powerful images of 19th century romance and swashbuckling adventure. The vice wouldn't be on our soil, we were told. It would be aboard ship, on excursions of limited duration. Barely four years into this experiment, none of Missouri's casinos travels today.

Then there was the $500 loss limit, a fact written into the original proposal to help sell it to skeptical voters. That loss limit remains but is the subject of heavy pressure in the annual attempts to abolish it in the legislature. Let's hope lawmakers continue to resist.

Then there are the boat-in-the-moat fiascoes. Gaming companies took to digging out artificial moats adjacent to the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers to serve their casinos. Thank God for the Missouri Supreme Court, which saw through this scam and unanimously ruled last month that it won't pass muster.

The decision to go to around-the clock gaming on our "riverboats" is most regrettable. It is another in a series whose collective meaning is that the bloom, such as it ever was, is off the rose for casino gambling in Missouri.