My two teenage boys recommended the link for this Carlton Draught (an Australian beer) commercial, I think because they want an easy link to it for their friends. Maybe the friends will read a few other posts while they here, so what the heck. Besides, the commercial is pretty darn impressive. Hat tip to Adrianne Truett for the link.
Is it just me or does anyone else find it odd that this USA Today article is doing a better job of covering the prosecutorial abuse that is taking place in the Enron-related criminal cases than supposedly more thorough national newspapers such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal?
Following up on this post from over the weekend, the USA Today article notes the utterly absurd and abusive tactic of the Task Force in fingering about 100 unindicted co-conspirators in its legacy case against former key Enron executives Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling and Richard Causey. The transparent purpose of the tactic is twofold:
First, to suppress exculpatory testimony in favor of the defendants from the unindicted co-conspirators, all or whom have declined to testify under their Fifth Amendment privilege out of fear of being indicted; and
Second, to have the testimony of the Task Force’s own witnesses about the alleged hearsay statements of the unindicted co-conspirators introduced into evidence as an exception to the hearsay rule. Not surprisingly, most of the Task Force’s witnesses are “cooperating witnesses” — i.e., former Enron executives who attempting to reduce their prison time by testifying against the defendants pursuant to plea bargains with the Task Force.
Of this tactic, the USA Today article notes the comments of Stanley Twardy, a former U.S. attorney who is now a defense lawyer in Connecticut, that “‘extremely rare’ for a case to have as many unindicted co-conspirators as [the Lay-Skilling-Causey] case does. It’s unusual to have them at all outside of drug and Mafia cases.”
As noted in this other post from over the weekend, the Task Force’s tactic has already resulted in a grave injustice in the Nigerian Barge case, where four Merrill Lynch executives are now serving prison terms because large amounts of exculpatory testimony for the defendants never came into evidence at trial. To avoid the same injustice from occurring in the Lay-Skilling-Causey trial, Judge Sim Lake should give the Task Force a deadline in which to indict any of the unindicted co-conspirators against whom the Task Force has a viable case, and then grant immunity from prosecution for all of the remaining unindicted co-conspirators. Only with such key testimony will the jury be able to sort out the truth of the Task Force’s allegations that the defendants engaged in criminal wrongdoing at Enron. Without such testimony, the jury will be deliberating on nothing more than the Task Force’s fictional screenplay of the defendants’ role in Enron’s demise.
This earlier post noted the extensive damage that Hurricane Katrina caused to the MARS floating production platform in the Gulf of Mexico, which generates about 220,000 barrels of oil and 220 million cubic feet of natural gas daily when operational. Following up on that story, this Tom Fowler/Chronicle article reports on the delicate repair operation that will be taking place this week on the MARS platform. Essentially, the process involves removing a damaged rig from the platform, but the damaged rig is so ensnared with other equipment on the platform that removing it could cause even more damage to the equipment on the platform. Another story on the repair operation from the Baton Rouge Advocate is here. It’s this type of cost of doing business in the oil and gas industry that tends to get overlooked amidst the bright lights that shine on this grandstanding.
This earlier post noted the weak nature of the indictment against former House Speaker Tom DeLay, although the Republican outrage over the indictment rings somewhat hollow. But following up on the thought about the dubious basis of the indictment, former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, Bradley A. Smith, does the best job that I have seen to date of disassembling the case against DeLay in this Wall Street Journal ($) op-ed:
To summarize, the theory against Mr. DeLay goes something like this: Corporations made legal contributions to TRMPAC; and then TRMPAC made a legal contribution of this soft money to the RNSEC, which, as required by federal law, kept the funds in a separate account. The RNSEC then used an account containing individual contributions (hard money) to make otherwise legal contributions to 42 candidates for state or local office in Texas, including seven who may have been specifically recommended to them by Mr. DeLay and others. Somehow this series of legal transactions constitutes money laundering.
After beating the spread in the past three games, the 1-9 Texans took a dive in front of a national television audience in the ESPN Sunday night game as their nightmare season continued. This one was over in the second quarter as the Chiefs sliced and diced the Texans defense to take a 24-7 lead before Texans QB David Carr iced it for the Chiefs by throwing an interception TD in the waning moments of the first half to give the Chiefs an insurmountable 31-7 lead. Although the Texans’ defense was non-existent, Carr was particularly bad, as was star WR Andre Johnson, who looked like a petulant jerk for most the game. The Rams come in next week for their confidence-building session against the Texans, and then its off to Baltimore and Tennessee for back-to-back road games. My oh my, this is a really bad football team, every bit as awful as the horrifying Oilers teams of the Bill Peterson era. The Texans sure could use Sid Gillman and Mike Holovak.
