Back from my rest 

Catching up on Enron 

It's not just a matter of the utter unfairness of it all — employees lose their life savings while crooked executives walk away rich. It's also a matter of what it takes to make capitalism work. Investors must be reasonably sure that reported profits are real, that executives won't use their positions to enrich themselves at the expense of stockholders and employees, that when insiders do abuse their positions their actions will be discovered and punished.

Now we have seen a graphic demonstration that the system that was supposed to provide those assurances doesn't work. And nobody I know in the financial community thinks Enron was an isolated case.

Then again, who in either party hasn't cashed an Enron check? No fewer than 71 senators and 188 congressmen have been on the Enron gravy train. All but 5 of the 56 members of another investigative committee, House Energy and Commerce, got Enron or Arthur Andersen dough. The country's chief law enforcement officer, John Ashcroft, has recused himself from the case because he too received Enron cash — though even that ethical gesture looks suspicious, given his failure to stay out of Justice matters involving such other contributors as the N.R.A. and Microsoft. Another Congressional investigator, Billy Tauzin, Republican of Louisiana, was the single biggest House recipient of Arthur Andersen campaign money. Phil Gramm, the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, and his wife, Wendy (a former federal regulator now on Enron's board), could pass for one of Enron's wholly owned Cayman Island subsidiaries.

Tobacco companies Harassing Universities? 

Kern and OKI