After United 93 was released, all of the 9/11 conspiracy nuts came out of the woodwork and made absurd proclamations alleging the Bush administration's willing complicity in the attacks. It's fascinating that people would have to fabricate and conjecture so much, when there was a perfectly good, plausible, and eminently provable conspiracy in the Enron scandal, which was arguably even more injurious to America than a handful of jihadis could ever be.

Just how much was Bill Clinton supposed to do, for goodness' sake! Did he happen to have a magic wand somewhere, where he could be all things to all people at the same time?

The man left behing A SURPLUS, kept us safe during the crucial Y2K, made this country safe and prosperous for millions of Americans, all in the face of being hand-tied by a Republican run Senate, who like mad dogs, constantly kept biting his rear end during his administration. He wanted to intervene in Sudan; they raised the chorus "No war for Monica". Are you forgetting? No doubt he'd have gotten around to Enron had they dared to be a unscrupulous in during his time as they were in Bush!

You want to compare BILL CLINTON/ AL GORE to a do-nothing,crony bare-back president like Bush??? It's almost a sacrilage.

Do me a favor. If you don't know what you're talking about, don't do this. Before you write anything in future, get your facts straight. A quick look back at the years of Clinton, an attempt at research, a mere few clicks of the computer would have gotten you the results you needed to give us something other than a weak rebuttal of the crap being spewed by right-wingers in a desperate attempt to throw the garbage at Clinton, a man whose boots their leader, Bush, isn't fit to lick, much less shine.

It was Newt. But, as you point out, Bush did his part too.

The seeds of Enron were planted in 1995 when the newly elected Republican majority passed the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Bill Clinton vetoed the bill because if left investors vulnerable to crooked companies and accountants.

Clinton also vetoed the 1995 Litigation Reform Act which shielded corporate executives from lawsuits for inaccurate projections of future performance even in the case of deliberate lies.

Both vetoes were overridden, and the climate that Clinton had forecast in 1995 bore the fruit of Enron, WorldCom, and Arthur Anderson.

C. Anthony Daughtrey

Knoxville, TN

Is the day for Ken Lay. Smart money bets that Bush lets his old buddy off the hook...

Very clever, Mr. Leonard, throwing in a bit of rank speculation --The great irony of Enron's rise and fall is that it was only the sheer enormity of the company's debacle that prevented Bush from giving assistance-- without a shred of evidence to support it in what purports to be a "factual" report. Without speculating, the fact remains that the Bush administration did not bend the rules to help Enron but Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, tried to get Treasury, SEC, and others to bend the rules to bail out Enron to save Rubin's company billions in ill-advised investments. That's a fact. As they say, you can look it up. Another fact: other Clintonoids such as Paul Krugman pronounce themselves shocked--shocked!--at Enron's shennaigangs, yet Krugman sat on Enron's board of advisers and also wrote puff pieces about the company for financial/business magazines.

And I'll tell you why I don't sign my name to my posts on Salon. The last time I dared post a conservative opinion with my real name I was hunted down on the Internet and harrassed with the most vile, hateful e-mails by rabid moonbats who hang out at sites like this. It got to the point that I not only had to change my e-mail address, but I also had to change ISPs, since they were still able to figure out my new e-mail if it was on the same ISP. That is how angry and spiteful Salon's readers are.

More evidence that Salon in general and Mr. Leonard, in particular, are highly selective in the "facts" they report. For instance, The New York Times (Section A; Column 6; National Desk; Pg. 1, "Enron Pursued Plan To Forge Close Ties To Gore Campaign" by Richard L. Berke, Feb. 15, 2002), reported that Enron gave almost as much money to the Gore campaign and Democrats as it did to the Bush campaign and Republicans.

Here are a few other juicy tidbits:

"In the summer of 2000, Enron hired one of Mr. Gore's old friends and a longtime financial supporter, Charles W. Bone."

"In what one Enron official recalled as a desire to 'have Enron's message become part of the energy and telecom policy of the Gore campaign,' Enron organized a dinner in the private Nest Lounge of the Willard Hotel, two blocks from the White House, that included top Gore and Enron officials as well as executives in the high-tech industry."

"Gore officials said they were happy to meet with Enron executives, given the company's importance and size."

"Mr. Lay was no stranger to Mr. Gore or to President Bill Clinton. At a meeting at the White House in 1997, for example, Mr. Lay pressed Mr. Clinton and Mr. Gore to support a market-based approach to global warming. Enron was one of the most visible corporate backers of the Kyoto Protocol, which the Bush administration has rejected, because Enron wanted to participate in the market for buying and selling emissions permits for the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming."

By the way, there was nothing improper about any of this contact between Gore et al. and Enron. Neither was there anything improper about the Bush adminstration's relationship with Enron.

And as I said below, only Democrats attempted to bend the rules on Enron's behalf and for the worst of all reasons--personal gain or loss.

There is no good reason to anonymously make assertions such as those you make. So state your name or withdraw your assertions--

Jane Smiley

...the criminal charges related to the accounting fraud, and not anything that falls under FERC jurisdiction. So even if there were a quid pro quod on the FERC side (which we may never discover because those meetings with Cheney energy meetings remain sealed), Skilling and Lay's guilt has NOTHING to do with it. As a result, your editorialization comes across as, with all due respect, inflammatory liberal ranting.

But lets assume for the sake of argument that there was a quid pro quod - financial backing of Bush in exchange for giving Enron its choice of people to head of FERC. That's not such a stretch. But lets not fool ourselves into thinking that Bush has a monopoly on quid pro quod. Clinton certainly handed out his own share of political favors. Just look at the Rich pardon.

The point being that lax regulation and the influence of money on politics are on BOTH sides of the aisle.