Hope everyone is enjoying March Madness – it’s been a while since our last post. Here is a quick rundown of today’s most interesting sports betting stories that you may want to check out:

• Mike Herndon from the Alabama Press Register authors an incredibly well thought out editorial on the future of gambling. A small excerpt:

  Caught up in Gov. Bob Riley’s end-of-term crusade against electronic bingo, Mobile County District Attorney John Tyson danced around the subject last week when asked if office pools are legal. The head of Riley’s task force on gambling, Tyson said he could offer no opinion on whether such pools are legal, but warned would-be bracket-fillers to “seek the advice of their lawyer, and do it immediately.”

  Want to hear something even sillier? According to the Mississippi attorney general’s office, office pools could potentially break two laws in the land of the Beau Rivage — a general statute about sports gambling and another provision about gambling outside casinos.

  You can blow a mortgage payment playing Texas Hold ’Em, apparently, but don’t dare drop $10 on an office pool.

  It’s been estimated that between one-fourth and one-half of the working American public enters a March Madness office pool.

  And I dare say just about all of us gamble in one form or another. We buy a lottery ticket when we go to Florida or Louisiana. We wager small favors on the outcomes of petty disagreements, like the couple in the Chase credit card commercial who bet a massage on whether an actual person will answer their customer service call. We settle trivial debates by agreeing that the loser will buy lunch.

• I don’t really understand how this can be legal (it would be great if someone with a legal background could explain) : Entrepreneur Touts Loophole That Allows Online Betting On Sports.

  The Cambridge, Massachusetts, native’s startup, StarStreet Inc., is treating pro sports like a stock market. Gamers place bets with real cash by buying shares in a team or an individual player. If the team or player does well, those share prices may go up, and the gamer wins.

  Levine swears it’s legal. He has the online game in a private beta test at StarStreetSports.com with about 150 users betting cash on teams in this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. He hopes to have the site ready for public unveiling in time for the 2010 professional football season.

  “The real simple reason it’s legal is because it’s a game of skill, not chance, that doesn’t depend on the outcome of any single event,” he said.

• Malaysia to legalize sports betting ahead of the World Cup. Malaysia is a pretty repressive country and even they are allowing their citizens to bet on sports. The United States Congress should take note.