My faith in the criminal justice system, which was rapidly withering on the vine, has just had a small infusion of hope: a jury found Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling guilty of lying about the finances of Enron, thus leading to financial devastation for thousands of Enron employees when the company collapsed.
Admittedly, their attorney is going to appeal the ruling, and the odds are pretty good that even if they do go to prison, it won't be for long enough and it will probably be one of those white-collar prisons with tennis courts and yoga classes (a la Martha Stewart), despite the fact that they probably did more damage and wreaked more havoc than many people locked up in real prisons.
And since they are such good friends of the current administration, there's still the possibility that GW will step in and push for some crazy act of Congress (Terri Schiavo, anyone?) to get them off the hook. Or maybe, as is his usual strategy, he'll just bypass Congress and, you know, lawfullness, altogether to get them out of trouble. Maybe the CIA and the NSA can help out with that. Or maybe there's still time for them to figure out how to blame the Enron employees for this whole mess. When in doubt, blame it on the poor people. That always works. And heck, if in the process of helping out some old drinking buddies, we can all figure out how to undermine just a little bit more of the Constitution, then so much the better, right?
Is it still considered cynicism if it's founded in reality?
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