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Ken Lay's Enron trial opened while Saddan was dragged kicking and screaming from his own trial.  Enron went belly up in December 2001.  Prosecutors got the goods on Lay by working their way up through lower executives.  Kingpen Ken wasn't even indicted until July of 2004.

They're doing the opposite in Iraq - working from the top down.  Maybe they hope Saddam will spill the beans so they can get the real evil genius in Iraq.  Baghdad Bob.

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When Bush was re-elected in 2004 some Democrats mused about moving to liberal tolerant Canada. The BBC reported on a tongue-in- cheek  campaign to marry  distraught Americans: "Legions of Canadians have already pledged to sacrifice
their singlehood to save their southern neighbours from four more years
of cowboy conservatism." Now that Canadians themselves have elected a conservative Prime Minister, can divorce be far behind?

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After a 20 mile swim up the Thames River, a Bottlnose Whale arrived in London last week. The purpose of the whale's visit was undetermined. It attracted world wide curiosity. Scientists suspect the event was either an omen or the whale became deranged and believed itself to be a salmon. The travelogue had an unhappy ending when the visitor perished after being hoisted on a barge for a return trip to the sea.

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Palestinian voters face the same problem as Americans.  Not much to choose from  political partywise.  We have Democrats and Republicans but they're all members of the Beltway / K street coalition of perpetual office holding.  Still, every so often, voters do rise up and throw the bums out.

Palestinians have Fatah and Hamas  - the corruption party and the terrorist party.  Perpetual office holding for Fatah ran up against its limits when Yasir Arafat assumed room temperature. Fatah hacks gobbled up foreign aid donations like they were Indian casino kickbacks.  Plus they couldn't fix the streets or control the street thugs.  So the voters threw the bums out and replaced them with more disciplined, higher octane terrorists.  Hamas actually can make the trains run on time.  Whether it can wipe out Israel, a major plank in its platform,  remains to be seen. 

One thing is sure.  If Hamas wants to govern it will have to survive the victory party.

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The only thing that disturbs Canadians more than the overbearing behavior of their neighbors to the south is when we forget about them.

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Paul Jones, the mayor of Ravenna, Ohio, resigned in mid-term and moved to Florida. Coincidentally, he left town just as he earned 30 years of civil service for his pension. Also, coincidentally, he is being investigated by the FBI. Part of the investigation involves a lawn mowing and snow removal service owned by his son.

According to Rick Armon's story in the Akron Beacon Journal, "Neighborhood Development Services Inc., a nonprofit housing and
economic development entity that manages millions of dollars for
Ravenna and Portage County, acknowledged this week that it hired Paul
Jones Jr. for mowing services and paid him more than $274,900 for work
between 1997 and 2004.

NDS also has said it ended the deal partly because the mayor — not his son — was doing the mowing."

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My wife was the first person to look at this and say, "Nice picture. I don't get it". Now that I look at it, I'm not sure I do either.

I was intrigued by Osama's latest piece of audio taped performance art which included  truce offers, threats, and book reviews. It was an impressive comeback for a guy I thought was dead.

Sitting next to him in the drawing, is Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri, the "second in command" target of a CIA missile last week. I figured most people would recognize him as bin Laden's side-kick.

We heard from Zawahiri last in a letter to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq. In the letter, he politely asked Zarqowi, The Be-header, to lighten up on blowing fellow Muslims to smithereens and, by the way, please send some money.  So far, Zarqowi appears to have ignored both requests.

I completely complicated things by alluding to General McAuliffe's Battle of the Bulge reply of, "Nuts," when the Germans asked him to surrender.

Bet you're glad I didn't mention Zorro.

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Uncle sam is taking Google to court to force the company to turn over the search records of millions of googlers. Google is resisting.  According to the New York Times Yahoo, MSN, and America Online have already caved to similar subpoenas from our Nosey Parker uncle. The government says it wants the records to track pornography users. Since the snoops went to the trouble to get a court order I guess we can assume terrorists don't do on-line porn.

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