CFTC Rightly Cracking Down on Intrade Commodities Futures

Scanning the Web, the digirati mostly seem apalled that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is going after Intrade, but honestly I don't see that Intrade has a leg to stand on here. In principle, Intrade is a "prediction market" and not a casino or an end run around regulation of commodities markets. But when Intrade goes and launches contracts on the price of oil and gold, then they're clearly crossing that line. This is futures speculation, there's a legal way to do it, and what Intrade is doing isn't that legal way. Now in practice, I doubt there'd be any harm if the CFTC decided to play nice and let this slide. But refusing to let it slide is exactly what we need regulators to do. In the Clinton and Bush eras, regulators generally seemed to take the view that the regulations themselves were a kind of unfortunate superstition. Insofar as smart bankers and their lawyers ...