Five years later

It took five years, but justice was finally served today. Kenneth "Kenny Boy" Lay was convicted for his part in the fraudulent destruction of Enron.

It seems like a long time ago, but before 9-11 this was really big news. And everyone was wondering, just how much influence did Ken Lay and Enron have over the Dick Cheney energy task force that shaped this country's energy policy.

Your remember the original Bush energy policy, don't you? The policy that was instituted before Bush stood in front of TV cameras and told us we were addicted to oil? Before that, the administration's policy was to consume, drill, consume, and drill. Cheney, when asked about whether conservation should be a part of the country's energy policy, sneered and said that's a "personal virtue."

And when asked during press briefing about America's out-of-control energy consumption, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer uttered these memorable words:

Q Is one of the problems with this, and the entire energy field, American lifestyles? Does the president believe that, given the amount of energy Americans consume per capita, how much it exceeds any other citizen in any other country in the world, does the President believe we need to correct our lifestyles to address the energy problem?

MR. FLEISCHER: That's a big no. The President believes that it's an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one. And we have a bounty of resources in this country. What we need to do is make certain that we're able to get those resources in an efficient way, in a way that also emphasizes protecting the environment and conservation, into the hands of consumers so they can make the choices that they want to make as they live their lives day to day.

For, you see, George W. Bush was good buddies with the energy industry. So why would he act against their interests?

And Kenny Boy Lay and George W. Bush were good buddies, as these 40 individual pieces of correspondance of between them would seem to indicate.

They exchanged gifts, invitations to Broadway plays, and most of all, Kenny Boy funneled lots of cash to GWB. As you can see, individual employees of Enron donated $77,000 to Bush during the 2000 election cycle, including about $3,000 from Ken and his wife Laura personally. But Ken didn’t stop there. He not only got his employees to give tens of thousands of dollars to George, he also was a Bush-Cheney Pioneer (which meant he raised at least $100,000 for the campaign. Sources say he raised a total of $550,000 for Bush over the years.

And that fundraising bought Lay access and influence in the Bush White house:

When Kenneth L. Lay, for example, a 2000 Pioneer and then-chairman of Enron Corp., was a member of the Energy Department transition team, he sent White House personnel director Clay Johnson III a list of eight persons he recommended for appointment to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Two were named to the five-member commission.

When it came to shaping this country's energy policy, Lay and Enron had a seat at the table every step of the way. And now the country is in the grip of a national energy crisis, thanks in part to the fact that the president allowed a now-convicted felon have a big piece of the pie. After all, the energy bill it creates was nothing but a wishlist for the energy industry. Heck, if that previous site is to be believed, even Iraq was a part of the wish list.

So now, Kenny Boy is officially a convicted felon. He won't be sentenced until Sept. 11, of all days. Hopefully he won't skip town before the sentencing. Has he surrendered his passport yet? I think he keeps it hidden behind that painting Bush gave him as a Christmas gift about 8 years ago.

Was it the hookers or the cash?

Porter Goss resigned as director of the CIA today. No reason for his resignation was given. In the press opp at the White house with Goss and Bush, the president offered no schedule for Goss' departure, or for the naming of his replacement. Any day now, the public will probably learn that Goss was quitting ahead of a major sex and bribery scandal.

Obviously, the White House is doing some form of damage control. If this was well planned, they would have had a replacement in mind already. Some bad news is coming.

Bill Kristol, normally a satanic apologist for the White House, actually had a rare moment of candor on Fox News earlier today when he speculated that some bad news was coming and that's why Goass was suddenly leaving. He even alluded to some rumors that so far have been largely confined to blogs and some print media.

For you see, rumors are swirling that Goss is one of a handful of past and current congressmen who shared in the spoils and largesse of disgraced Calif. congressman Duke Cunningham who pleaded guilty to taking bribes from defense contractor while he sat on the defense appropriations subcommittee.

Those rumors are that the FBI is investigating several past and current congressmen. The investigation is looking at defense contractors Brent Wilkes, the founder of ADCS Inc., and Mitchell Wade, the founder of MZM Inc., who supposedly held poker games at the Watergate and Westin Grand hotels in DC with Cunningham and others. Those games also included free limo rides and free prostitutes. So, sex, gambling, and cash were being thrown around for congressmen who were willing to spend defense department dollars on superfluous contractors. MZM and ADCS specialized in software for defense intelligence.

And according to Harper's Weekly a former congressman who now holds a "powerful intelligence post" was one of those who is now under investigation. Who else could that be but Goss? His hand-picked number three guy, Dusty Foggo, is under investigation for corruption and bribery within the same circle of corrupt scum.

Of course the White House is already trying to spin it, even though there's nothing that will stop the tsunami of bad press that will hit when Goss's corruption hits the news. Chris Wallace, a shameless Fox News shill, reported the following breaking news: Wallace said he talked to a "top White House official" - Tony Snow, I'm sure - who said that Goss's resignation was part of Josh Bolten's ongoing White House shake up. That's just bull. A CIA director shouldn't be part of a staff shake up. He's not a part of the cabinet or a part of the White House staff. Goss is the head of an important government agency.

Who cares if it was funny?

Dear reader, by now many of you have read a transcript or seen a video of Stephen Colbert's roasting of George W. Bush, his administration, and just about everyone else at the recent White House Correspondents' Association dinner. If not, here it is at Youtube.

At the very least, it is a fascinating viewing experience. Colbert uses irony and satire to tear apart Bush, Republicans, and the cowed media that cover them on a regular basis. But there Colbert is, face to face with all the self-important people who have insulated themselves from the rest of us, skewering them mercilessly.

Bush would never appear on Colbert's show to endure that abuse. Neither will Colbert's main target on his show, Bill O'Reilly ever appear on the "Colbert Report." Why? Because the truth hurts. When someone uses humor to expose just how ridiculous or incompetent you are, it's hard to respond. That's why bullies in the movies always seem to back down after the nerdy weakling says something witty to put them down. The power of the mind often overcomes the brute strength of physical power. At least, we wish that was the case.

Anyway, I believe Colbert's roasting was heroic. He spoke truth to power in every sense of the phrase. Nothing he said to Bush was untrue, was it? His poll numbers ARE a disaster. Iraq IS in chaos. Cheney DID shoot a man in the face. It's all there in the record. He wasn’t accusing Bush of being a child molester or a Satanist. He was holding a mirror up to Bush's face and forcing him to look at his own miserable failure as a president.

To me, that is a significant moment, given that it happened at this baroque event in front of a crowd of 2,600 members of the political, media and Hollywood elite. Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame were there. George Clooney. The Joint Chiefs of Staff. Helen Thomas. Everyone.

And yet, the response to Colbert's moment was, initially at least, total silence.

Elizabeth Bumiller, the New York Times' White House correspondent, the pen that drops her ink on the flagship of our nation's newspaper industry, declined to even mention Colbert's name in her report.

Instead, she made a like a stenographer and gave us a dull blow-by-blow account of Bush's lame shtick at the same event, his "self-deprecating" performance with a Bush impersonator.

I wrote a letter to the New York Times asking why Colbert's 20-minute tour-de-force warranted nary a mention in its esteemed pages. I received no direct response, although a similar letter was published in the Times Tuesday.

But there was some discussion, especially in the blogosphere. Some cable news shows weighed in, especially on Fox News, where some of the usual suspects attacked Colbert for "going over the line." Editor and Publisher, a industry mag for the newspaper industry weighed in with a decent report.

Then in the Times' Arts (????) section, this story appeared. Finally, the New York Times acknowledged that Colbert's speech actually happened. And it actually gave us some juicy details. But the Times also seemed to be excusing itself for why it initially chose to ignore Colbert's performance.

Others chided the so-called mainstream media, including The New York Times, which ignored Mr. Colbert's remarks while writing about the opening act, a self-deprecating bit Mr. Bush did with a Bush impersonator.

Some, though, saw nothing more sinister in the silence of news organizations than a decision to ignore a routine that, to them, just was not funny.

"I'm a big Stephen Colbert fan, a huge Bush detractor, and I think the White House press corps has been out to lunch for much of the last five years," Noam Scheiber wrote by way of introduction on the New Republic's Web site. But a few lines later he said: "I laughed out loud maybe twice during Colbert's entire 20-odd minute routine. Colbert's problem, blogosphere conspiracy theories notwithstanding, is that he just wasn't very entertaining."

And here is where we get to the very heart of the matter. Whether or not Colbert's performance was funny is irrelevant. Humor is generally a matter of personal taste and individual point of view. Some people see an old lady fall down a set of stairs and laugh, others don't. Some people see a drunk guy throw up on the side of the road and chuckle while others are disgusted.

No, this is not about humor. It's about substance. It's about the event itself. It's about one of the president's and the media's most talented and insightful critics have a rare and unheard of opportunity to lambaste them, to point out their hypocrisy, to urge them to wake up and do their jobs right. And they were forced to listen.

The lack of enthusiastic laughter in that YouTube video isn't attributable to a lack of funniness alone.

There are really three reasons why the laughter was sparse at best.

1. Some people honestly didn't find him funny (fair enough).
2. Many were in shock and wincing as they watched Bush take his licks.

And finally:

3. The truth hurts.

Yes, dear media, the truth hurts. While you feed us an endless and steady stream of coverage on Natalie Holloway, Michael Jackson, the Duke Lacrosse rape scandal and so-called serious stories such as Cheney's hunting accident and the furor over a Spanish-language Star-Spangled Banner, more important things are happening: The Constitution has been torn to shreds by the president, Congress is bought and paid for, genocide is ongoing in Sudan, Iraq is in a state of civil war, human-caused climate change is wreaking havoc on the world, and the president is incompetent.

When I wrote for a newspaper, the editors were always looking for ways to write stories that the readers wanted to read. I say enough of that BS. The news media has a responsibility to demand more of the reader and the viewer. Don't give them what they want. That just makes the public fat and stupid. Demand more of the reader. Make them pay attention to what's really important.

That's what Colbert was doing that night. It culminated finally with the image of Helen Thomas marching down an anonymous street, notebook in hand, demanding answers. See for yourself. And then ask yourself, are the 2,600 people in that room, who have more power over our nation's future than the rest of us, truly serving the nation's as well as they should be? Colbert's answer is "no." I agree.