State-sanctioned gambling has yielded a fair amount of hypocrisy in the past, but the legislature's latest pretense of virtue is more insufferable than most. It's all very well for the state Senate to eliminate the slot machine-like gambling devices that have recently proliferated in Southern Maryland, but to do so and ignore the illegal gambling in the Baltimore area is quite beyond the pale.

But that's exactly what the Senate has done by not going after illegal gambling activities in Baltimore and Baltimore County when it approved emergency legislation this week aimed at St. Mary's County's instant bingo machines and their ilk.

A video poker machine in a bar or carryout may be marked "for amusement only," but the average patron knows full well that wink-and-nod payoffs merely require timely assistance from an attentive employee. Some tavern owners have admitted they earn as much as or more from their machines than from alcohol sales.

Maryland's gaming laws are a bit of a mess, but at least legalized slot machines in Eastern Shore fraternal organizations and tip jars in Western Maryland are tightly regulated, with a sizable percentage of proceeds going to good works. The under-the-counter variety is a far worse situation - with the cash payouts and lack of accounting, there's little regulation and negligible benefit for taxpayers.

It's not hard to understand what has motivated the Senate: The bill's supporters know that angering all those Baltimore-area business owners who operate the highly profitable video poker machines is going to make it harder to win approval of the legislation. So keeping video poker out of the bill makes it a much easier vote for Baltimore-area legislators.

Yet to ban the gambling devices from Southern Maryland without touching the thousands of Baltimore-area machines seems at best a contradiction - as Comptroller Peter Franchot has alertly pointed out. Are lawmakers more interested in eliminating competition for potential state-owned slot machines than cracking down on illegal gambling? The Senate's action speaks louder than words.

The Baltimore area's illegal video gambling machines can't be considered off-limits. The only reasonable choice is to ban them as well. It's just too difficult under existing law for police to crack down on this hidden gambling.