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Thursday January 10 12:32 PM ET White House: Enron Official Phoned By KAREN GULLO, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Enron Chairman Kenneth L. Lay reached out to two of President Bush (news - web sites)'s Cabinet officers when the energy company was collapsing, the White House disclosed Thursday as the Justice Department (news - web sites) opened a criminal investigation of Enron's bankruptcy. Bush, who received significant campaign contributions from Lay and other Enron executives, said he himself has never discussed Enron's financial problems with its embattled corporate chairman. The president said he last saw Lay in Texas at ...

...During his run for the White House, Bush fought long and hard to convince us that he was a new breed of conservative--a Compassionate Conservative. But recent events make clear that he is actually the standard-bearer of a far more coldhearted breed. Call them the Enron Conservatives. Enron Conservatives are people who use political money and connections as levers to free themselves of all accountability to laws, regulations and responsibility--even to their own employees. Simply put, they are people who consistently, shamelessly and aggressively put their self-interest above the public interest...

The US Government has opened a criminal investigation of fallen energy giant Enron. The White House says the probe is necessary to protect the interests of workers and pensioners in similar companies. Justice Department officials did not disclose when the investigation began but said it would be centred within the department's criminal division. When Enron filed for bankruptcy on 2 December, thousands of employees lost their jobs and billions of dollars when the company prevented them from selling shares from retirement accounts as they plunged in value. Executives in Enron, once the world's largest energy trading firm, meanwhile drew out ...

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<p>WASHINGTON (AP) -- Because of Enron Corp.'s sudden bankruptcy, congressional Democrats have won their first victory in a nine-month effort to squeeze information from the Bush White House on its ties to the energy industry.</p> <p>For the first time, the White House is acknowledging that Enron representatives met six times with Vice President Dick Cheney or his aides on energy issues last year, most recently in mid-October just before the investing public realized the company was heading for disaster.</p>

Brit Hume just interrupted the regular news to say The Justice Department has announced it will open a criminal investigation into Enron, with Justice Department officials in Houston, New York, San Francisco in charge. Hume just made the one or two sentence announcement. I'll keep looking for wire stories or news on other networks. (Gee, Hope I'm not the last one who heard of this)

Nothing posted , but the headlines

During the mist of a war on terrorism, Bush has apparently emerged victorious in Afghanistan. He achieved an unprecedented victory that caught the Nay Sayers by surprise after they alluded to doom & gloom scenarios of another Vietnam. Bush has also done some great maneuvering to pull us out of the Clinton recession managing to garner the 60 votes needed to pass his economic stimulus package. Of course economic stimulus would pass, but one man has stepped up on behalf of liberal democrats. That man is Tom Daschle, obstructionist extraordinaire. In a Washington Times article, apparently a poll conducted by ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Representatives of the collapsed energy giant Enron Corp. met six times with Vice President Dick Cheney or staff from his energy task force, the White House has told a Democratic lawmaker.In a Jan. 3 letter to Rep. Henry Waxman, vice presidential counsel David Addington said that Enron's Chairman Kenneth Lay met Cheney once during the development of the administration's energy plan. Cheney has already acknowledged this publicly.But the Addington letter also revealed five further meetings with Cheney's energy task force staff, three of which took place before the White House energy policy was announced in May and ...

<p>WASHINGTON - "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall."</p> <p>This week, this old nursery rhyme has taken control of this column. From Washington to Pittsburgh by way of New York City and Los Angeles with important detours to China, Japan, India, Mozambique, Croatia, England, Germany and elsewhere in the world, we have been watching and reading about the great fall of Enron.</p>

I posted this in "News" because Enron is news. Joe Lieberman is about to start his Enron hearings, his politically motivated witch hunt. His mission is to tie Enron misdeeds and bankruptcy to President Bush, VP Cheney, and other members of the administration. The democrats are salivating at the headlines they hope to generate for the 2002 & 2004 election cycles. "Bush Corporate Friends Steal Life Savings From The Poor" It's not going to be pretty! But hopefully, republicans are doing their homework. Digging up dirt on Ron Brown's connection to Enron is easy. Republicans will need to connect all ...

The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), plans to issue roughly 30subpoenas this week seeking documents relating to the collapse of the Houston-based energy giant Enron Corp. The subpoenas mark the acceleration of what is expected to be a lengthy and politically tinged investigation into the company's failure. The Governmental Affairs Committee subpoenas will target top Enron officials and members of its board of directors going back to 1991, as well Arthur Andersen, Enron's outside auditor, according to Senate Democratic aides. Lieberman, along with Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who oversees the permanent Governmental Affairs subcommittee ...

Bandwidth Trading Hopes Shatter on Fiber Optic Glut Last Updated: January 03, 2002 02:41 PM ET--> Print This Article &nbsp; Email this story&nbsp; --> By Nichola Groom NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hopes that trading of bandwidth could turn out to be the next big thing have collapsed amid a glut of fiber optic cable and the bankruptcy of Enron Corp. ENE.N, its biggest proponent. Bandwidth -- the capacity of a fiber optic line to transmit data from one point to another as on the Internet -- was once thought to be a commodity as easily traded as gold or ...

The collapse came swiftly for Enron Corp. when investors and customers learned they could not trust its numbers. On Sunday, six weeks after Enron disclosed that federal regulators were examining its finances, the global energy-trading powerhouse became the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history. Like all publicly traded companies in the United States, Enron had an outside auditor scrutinize its annual financial results. In this case, blue-chip accounting firm Arthur Andersen had vouched for the numbers. But Enron, citing accounting errors, had to correct its financial statements, cutting profits for the past three years by 20 percent -- about $586 million. ...

&nbsp; The Angry Liberal Commentary of the Day: The Top Ten Bush Administration Policy Mistakes Yesterday the White House changed its mind. . . again. After cutting the FY '02 funding for cooperative nuclear security programs with Russia and the other independent states of the former Soviet Union by 32%, the Bush Administration suddenly decided that allowing bad guys acquire nuclear material might not be a good thing after all. Of course, the move was overshadowed in the popular press by a defiant Bush vowing to capture Osama bin Laden again. So between that shocker of a headline and ...

Top Enron officials oversaw controversial partnerships, documents show By Associated Press, 1/2/2002 16:18 HOUSTON (AP) Top Enron Corp. officials were directly involved in the creation and oversight of the partnerships that ultimately led to the energy company's collapse, according to documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal. One of the documents said Enron set up a review procedure to avoid conflicts of interest, because some of the partnerships were run by Enron executives, including former chief financial officer Andrew Fastow, who was ousted in October. These procedures required former chief executive and president Jeff Skilling and two other senior Enron ...

Paper: Enron Heads Knew of Partnerships NEW YORK (Reuters) - Top Enron Corp. officials knew about the financial partnerships that fueled the former energy-trading giant's downfall, and were aware of the possible conflict-of-interest issues surrounding its former chief financial officer's involvement in them, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. Internal documents indicate that the partnerships were viewed as essential to maintaining Enron's rapid growth rate, the newspaper said in its online edition. The documents also confirm the theory that top officials, including chairman Kenneth Lay and former president Jeffrey Skilling, were very involved with setting up and overseeing ...

Ex-Enron workers look to Congress By CHRIS H. SIEROTY WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 (UPI) -- Several retirees told a Senate hearing Tuesday how they lost most of their life savings in the collapse of Enron, while the committee announced that the bankrupt energy trader's chief executive officer would testify before it in February. Janice Farmer, who retired last year with nearly $700,000 in Enron stock, said since the company barred her from selling Enron shares she now lives on a $63 monthly pension check from another company and is still a year away from receiving Social Security benefits. "My life savings ...

By Joe Conason, New York ObserverWhile the implosion of Enron is almost as murky as the bankrupt company's financing schemes, its self-dealing and scamming have evoked memories of other great business scandals, such as Teapot Dome and the South Sea Bubble. Whether or not those analogies ever prove to be justified, the most compelling political comparison for the moment is with another scandal that turned out, despite the investigative zeal of journalists, pols and prosecutors, to be more squib than bombshell: Whitewater.Consider the stated purposes of the long, costly probe into that tiny, troubled land deal, as expressed in the ...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A week before filing for bankruptcy protection, Enron Corp. (news/quote) contributed $100,000 to Democrats after giving nearly all its prior donations this year to Republicans. The money went to the organization that aids Senate Democratic candidates, but a recently hired attorney for Enron insisted the donations were unrelated to congressional investigations. Attorney Robert Bennett, who represented former President Clinton and other high-profile clients, said the money was pledged months before Enron's collapse prompted the congressional inquiries. Rather, he said, the shift reflected the Democrats taking control of the Senate this year. ``Donations of this type reflect certain ...