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The World Bank Eurocrats finally whacked Paul Wolfowitz for doing exactly what they told him to do.

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Steve Jobs and Apple are in trouble for backdating.  Backdating is a complex financial prodecure requiring Mr. Jobs to call old girlfriends.

According to Holman Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal it is a perfectly legitimate business practice.  A special 2 man committee, including Apple director and Internet inventor, Al Gore, investigated Jobs and cleared him. 

Since executive options come out of the existing shareholders' hide you'd think they'd be pretty steamed about the whole backdating thing. Not. Apple stock rose to record highs.

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Outraged Democrats plan to use the behavior of Mark Foley  as a campaign club to beat the bushes for Republican voters.

Maybe it's working.  Republican Tom Reynolds is in charge of protecting House seats in the upcoming election.  But he finds himself so far behind in the polls that he had to resort to "human shields" according to Britain's Times Online:

"Mr Reynolds suffered widespread ridicule for holding a press conference
last week where he surrounded himself with young children of
supporters, prompting reporters to complain that in such circumstances
they were unable to ask him about the sexually charged computer
messages. The Democrats muttered about Mr Reynolds using “kids as human
shields”.

On the other hand, too much focus on Foley may not be the best way for the party of gay marriage to attract angry republicans.  Here's Earl Ofari Hutchinson referring to an MSNBC poll in the Huffington Post:

"The poll certainly found voters more ready than ever to punish GOP
candidates for the appalling corruption, arrogance and ineptitude of
the Republican leadership. But the Dems make a colossal mistake if they
think that Foley and the GOP's follies alone will put them over the top."

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Florida Republican Mark Foley took big chances sending raunchy e-mails and lewd text messages to congressional pages.  Maybe he thought he would be protected.  Or maybe we was committing political suicide. He resigned his seat.

On the other hand, he's still following congressional procedure.  He has checked into rehab, giving alcoholism a bad name.

The question now is what did House Speaker Hastert know about Foley's messages and when did he know it.

The Washington Times thinks Hastert is Foley's keeper and he should step down too.  The Wall Street Journal asks why go after Hastert when  Democrat Gerry Studds actually seduced a page 23 years ago and was allowed to remain a member of congress for 13 years after being censured?

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A memorial service was held for Ken Lay yesterday in Houston, the same city where he was convicted 6 weeks ago.  He insisted on his innocence then.  Evidently he's had the last word. 

If a defendant dies in Texas before he can appeal his conviction the verdict is dismissed.  Ken Lay is a free man now, in more ways than one according to Bloomberg columnist, Ann Woolner. 

"And so, Lay's death erases the criminal conviction that it
took the federal government 4½ years to win…  The principle is called "abatement ab initio," the Latin
portion meaning "from the beginning." …  So when it comes to Lay, it's as if the Justice Department
never established a special Enron Task Force, never deployed
armies of lawyers and agents to determine his role in Enron's
collapse, never strong-armed Enron employees to give evidence,
never won an indictment, and, finally, never spent months
persuading a jury to convict him."

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The Detroit Free Press reports that a 75 year old prison inmate named Donovan Wells told the FBI Jimmy Hoffa was buried on an 89 acre horse farm in MIlford Township, Michigan. 

The name of the farm is Hidden Dreams.

50 agents armed with a 75,000 lb. excavator ground to pieces a 100 foot long horse barn in the search, but failed to turn up any sign of Hoffa.

Apparently the dig moved on to the Washington legislative office of U.S. Rep. William Jefferson. The Capitol Building was not ground up due to separation of power concerns.  The FBI still managed to find something but president Bush ordered the evidence sealed for 45 days.  The obvious cover-up caused unnamed high ranking officials to point out that Bush not only lied, he murdered Jimmy Hoffa.