CALL ME, OSAMA BIN LAY:

Feds Hit A Trifecta (Andrew Cohen, July 9, 2004, CBS News)

By any measure, Thursday was a great day at the office for federal prosecutors and investigators. Former Enron chief Kenneth Lay was taken into custody on his way to the corporate trial of the century. Martha Stewart lost her last best chance for a new trial when a judge poo-poohed the damage done to her by an allegedly perjurious witness. And a jury in federal court in Manhattan returned with a fairly decisive verdict in the corporate case involving Adelphia Communications Corp.

What a difference a week makes. Last week, the Justice Department was rightly hammered by the Supreme Court on issues as diverse as terrorism and pornography. This week, the Justice Department can rightly crow that it has made great strides in its self-styled war against corporate greed. Last week, even Justice Antonin Scalia refused to come to the defense of the Bush Administration. This week, unrelenting government action forced Ken Lay to say with an apparently straight face that he, too, is a victim of Enron.

It's all well and good to hammer white-collar criminals, but there's something rather deranged about a legal system where they get treated more harshly than terrorists.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 9, 2004 2:32 PM