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Last night on CNBC's financial programming it was said that a story would be breaking today in the Wall Street Journal that Ken Lay called Mitch Daniels to see if the stimulus bill with 252 million dollars for Enron and other companies would be passed. There was also going to be a new development on Enron's influence on energy policy in the same edition.

Jan. 15--Three days after she denied a motion to freeze the assets held by Enron executives and board members, U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal has inexplicably recused herself from all Enron cases. Rosenthal signed the three-sentence court documents Friday without stating a reason for her withdrawal. All Enron cases here involving lawsuits filed by shareholders, employees and others have been reassigned to U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon. U.S. Attorney Michael Shelby said he received no word on why Rosenthal recused herself. He said he assumes "it's her exercising her good and sound discretion." The move also baffled attorneys involved ...

WASHINGTON Sen. Chuck Schumer said yesterday a special prosecutor is needed to probe the collapse of energy giant Enron. Nearly a dozen investigations into Enron's actions have been launched, many headed by officials who have received political donations from Enron. "While there should be congressional investigations into the collapse of Enron, Sen. Schumer also believes that a special counsel could be especially useful in getting to the bottom of Enron's collapse," said Bradley Tusk, Schumer's spokesman. Last month's bankruptcy of Enron devastated thousands of employees and investors. Top executives sold their stocks before the company's ill health was known, walking ...

<p>January 15, 2002 -- A smoking-gun memo in the Enron case reveals the energy giant's top executives were warned that the company's "funny" accounting practices could trigger a massive scandal, U.S. lawmakers said yesterday.</p> <p>In a letter last August, an Enron whistleblower complained to Chairman Kenneth Lay that the high-flying energy trader was hiding losses in specially created partnerships shrouded by a "veil of secrecy."</p>

The front page of the Washington Post revealed the news that former Clinton Secretary of Treasury, Robert Rubin, presently employed by Citigroup bank- a bank that loaned Enron in the neighborhood of 750 million dollars- called the Bush Administration last fall to request the Treasury Department pressure credit rating agencies to conceal from the public Enron's financial troubles. The Bush Administration refused. Democrat Henry Waxman, however, says now that the Bush Administration should have helped to conceal from the public, Enron employees, and Enron stock holders the real financial trouble Enron was in. Apparently Congressman Waxman believes that if Enron ...

Some readers may recall the first appearance in this space by Enron, the world's biggest energy trader. It was during last summer's California blackouts, when I was struck by the state's innovative attempt to pin the whole thing on the company's chief executive, Ken Lay. "I would love," said Bill Lockyer, California's Attorney-General, "to personally escort Lay to an 8x10 cell that he could share with a tattooed dude who says, 'Hi, my name is Spike, honey.' " Fortunately for Mr. Lay, he lived not in California but in Texas, beyond the reach of Mr. Lockyer's summary cell-share program. ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An Enron Corp. employee warned the company's chairman in August of accounting problems and a "veil of secrecy" around certain partnerships that later contributed to the collapse of the world's largest energy trader, congressional investigators said on Monday. "I am incredibly nervous that we will implode in a wave of accounting scandals," the employee wrote, according to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Billy Tauzin and investigations subcommittee head Rep. James Greenwood. In a sign that employees were worried long before Enron filed the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history on Dec. 2, the female global finance ...

<p>NEW YORK (AP) — The Swiss investment bank that is buying Enron Corp.'s power-trading business will share a third of its profits with Enron and its creditors, a source familiar with the situation said yesterday.</p> <p>The plan to revive Enron's trading business in a bankruptcy proceeding calls for UBS Warburg to purchase the unit without paying any cash up front, said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.</p>

<p>The Big Five accounting firm is expected to undergo intense scrutiny by investors and prospective clients as it faces a possible criminal investigation into its audits of Enron Corp., which filed the largest bankruptcy ever. Enron's collapse is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Justice Department, Labor Department and at least eight congressional committees.</p>

HICAGO, Jan. 14 — The Northern Trust Corporation (news/quote), the money management and financial services company, reported weaker-than-expected profits today and announced that it would write off about $20 million in loans to the Enron Corporation (news/quote). Northern Trust, which handled Enron's 401(k) pension plan until October, also disclosed that it had made a total of $43.5 million in loans to Enron over the last few years. Though other major banks and financial institutions have more at stake with Enron, the energy trading firm that filed for bankruptcy protection last month, Northern Trust is one of the first to ...

<p>Enron was a leading supporter of the Kyoto global warming treaty, but that did not deter the Bush administration from dumping the pact, writes conservative activist Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival Inc.</p> <p>"Enron was a big backer of the treaty, also called the Kyoto Protocol, and yet Bush has abandoned it because of questions about the science behind the theory and the cost," Mr. Kincaid said in a prepared statement.</p>

<p>YOU may not know it yet - in part because the mainstream media doesn't exactly know it yet - but the Enron scandal died over the weekend.</p> <p>Certainly, the details of how a $70 billion company went bankrupt in record time will continue to fascinate, and it may well be that people in and around Enron will deservedly end up in jail.</p>

TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Linda ChavezQUICK LINKS: HOME | NEWS | OPINION | RIGHTPAGES | CHAT | WHAT'S NEWtownhall.comLinda Chavez (back to story)January 15, 2002Democrats on a partisan fishing trip Sometimes you're damned if you do and damned if you don't -- especially if there's partisan advantage in it. That seems to be the case with the recent controversy involving the Enron Corporation and the Bush administration. It seems Enron executives, hoping for some help, called folks in the Bush administration last fall when signs of the company's financial crisis were becoming clearer to insiders. The Bush appointees listened, checked ...

ASHINGTON, Jan. 14 — Seven months ago, when he took over as chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman said he would examine the "serious allegations" raised by a colleague from California about the relationship between the Enron Corporation (news/quote) and one of its chief Washington regulators. But other than seek a report from the General Accounting Office on a narrow aspect of the issue, the Governmental Affairs Committee never issued any subpoenas or held any hearings on the political ties between the regulators and companies that included Enron. Last week, as the administration disclosed ...

Rubin, Rubin: The sainted former treasury secretary makes a sleazy phone call, and nobody cares. Reporters rustling furiously through the story of Enron's demise in search of a political scandal seem determined not to find one in former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin's Nov. 8 phone call to Treasury Undersecretary Peter Fisher. Rubin asked Fisher, a fellow Democrat, what he thought about having Treasury intervene to avoid a downgrading of Enron's debt rating. Rubin is chairman of the executive committee at Citigroup, which happens to be one of Enron's biggest creditors. Because Fisher told Rubin he thought Treasury intervention a bad ...

A flurry of editorials in today's (15 January 2002) newspapers indicate that some are beginning to grasp the true nature and scope of the unraveling Enron scandal: First, Richard Cohen, writing in the WashPost editorial A Time For Outrage...: "No, this is not a political scandal. This is a cultural event, a systemic collapse, an outrage so breathtaking that we poor scribblers have no category for it. We do not know how to say "crook" or "thief" or "creep" in describing business executives who sold $1.1 billion worth of shares in their own company while -- possibly, allegedly and just ...

For Immediate Release: January 14, 2001Enrongate Web site: http://democrats.com/enronDemocrats.com Launches Enrongate Web Site and Internet Advertising Campaign for Special ProsecutorDemocrats.com, which was the first group to call for a Special Prosecutor for the Enron investigation last Friday, today announced the launch of a special Enrongate Web site and an Internet advertising campaign to build public support for a Special Prosecutor."After the White House denied any involvement in the massive Enron bankruptcy, Americans learned this weekend that Enron's top executives did, in fact, discuss its financial crisis with top officials of the Bush administration, including the Secretary of the Treasury ...

WASHINGTON - As evidence of the reach of Enron's political tentacles continues to mount, the question in Washington may no longer be "Who had ties to Enron?" but "Who didn't?" Campaign-finance figures show that in recent years, the Houston-based energy company poured money not only into the campaign coffers of George W. Bush but also into those of many members of Congress. While more than two-thirds of the company's donations have gone to Republicans, a number of top Democrats have received Enron cash as well - a fact that could complicate the party's efforts to capitalize on the scandal in ...

Is the Bush Administration involved in the Enron scandal? http://www.vote.com

This is an excerpt from a Forbes article that needs a bit of follow-up, especially since I've not seen mention of it again. &quot;These unanswered questions are part of a pattern with Enron. No one really knows how it got so rich, or what it was doing with the many private partnerships managed by its executives. No one knows what prompted former Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling to quit the company in August 2001. Indeed, at a bankruptcy court hearing earlier this week, it was revealed that Enron does not know the location of 79 of its top executives or even ...