The Poker Players Alliance is flush with confidence after learning that their primary legislative agenda, legalizing online poker, ranked first as a priority among technology items in a citizens briefing book given to President Obama.

The briefing book, a project of the transition team, gathered policy ideas from Americans and submitted the most popular ones to Obama. Change.gov received more than 44,000 ideas and people cast more than 1.4 million votes on them. Policy ideas received 10 points for each positive vote and were ranked accordingly.

Boosting America's economy with legal online poker rung in with nearly 47,000 points, beating out 'restoring net neutrality protections' at 46,000 points. John Pappas, executive director of the Poker Players Alliance (and their principle lobbyist), is not surprised his issue came in at No. 1. "There is a very vocal community out there...through our website last year, over 80,000 letters were sent to Congress in support of licensing and regulating internet poker," he said.

PPA has more than one million members; in the first quarter of 2009 the organization spent $430,000 on lobbying, up $80,000 from the same period in 2008.

The debate over whether to regulate online gambling is gaining momentumm the Los Angeles Times reports on the industry's efforts.

But the most popular issue overall in the briefing book, with 92,970 points, is ending the prohibition on marijuana.

Here are the Top Ten issues overall:

• Ending Marijuana Prohibition - 92,970 points
• Commit to Becoming the "Greenest" Country in the World - 70,470
• Stop Using Federal Resources to Undermine States' Medicinal Marijuana Laws - 66,170
• End the Government Sponsored Abstinence Education to be Replaced by an Introduction of Age Appropriate Sex Education - 65,350
• Bullet Trains & Light Rail - 65,100
• Permanent Closure of all Torture Facilities - 61,250
• Revoke the George W. Bush Tax Cuts for the Top 1 percent - 57,080
• Get Insurance Companies Out of Health Care - 55,080
• Revoke the Tax Exempt Status of the Church of Scientology - 52,470
• Bring Back the Constitution - 50,160

                                                                                                          -- Eliza Krigman