And another thing …

When Enron executives approached the Bush administration for help in staving off the energy company’s financial collapse, they were told nothing could be done. The execs then sold off more than $1 billion in stock they held, while prohibiting tens of thousands of employees from

doing the same. That’s what’s called helping yourself.

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Maine log truckers, irate about a new law that will substantially increase fines for overweight trucks, are protesting by encouraging woodlot owners to block public access to huge swaths of field and forest traditionally used for outdoor recreation. It is hoped that denying the public such pleasures as hunting, fishing, hiking and camping will generate a groundswell of support for the truckers’ cause. Can’t wait to hear Plan B.

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There are red faces at CNN, where an in-house ad described news anchor Paula Zahn as “a little bit sexy” while something that sounded an awful lot like a zipper being activated was heard in the background. Ms. Zahn says she’s is furious, the news network says the fiasco is entirely the fault of the promotions division, the promotions division says the sound was not a zipper – it was a needle scratching a phonograph record. The incongruous explanation division says…

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Fox News, a promotion network with a news division, is feasting on the CNN episode and clearly enjoying the discomfort of Ms. Zahn, a former employee. Not to suggest that there’s any kind of obsession at work here, but Fox anchor Shepard Smith did recently follow his nightly Zahn update by describing Charles Bishop, the Florida teen who crashed a plane into a Tampa office building, as being of either “Syrian or

Lesbian” ancestry. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

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While the King administration moves ahead with its $37 million, four-year deal with Apple to provide laptops for middle-schoolers, some lawmakers are warning that the contract is vulnerable to a state law that makes such multi-year commitments subject to year-to-year legislative funding whims – the same law that allowed the state to back out of its vehicle-emissions program and that forced CarTest into bankruptcy. And they say Maine has a bad business climate.

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Thomas Friedman writes in The New York Times that Vice President Dick Cheney should stop hiding out in “an undisclosed location” and go back home

to his official residence on Massachusetts Avenue. We happen to know that the vice president has spent a lot of time there right along. A friend who uses the same house-cleaning service as Mr. Cheney says the cleaners see him there regularly. And he has 20 heavily armed Marines up on the fourth floor in case of trouble. Another friend, who lives between the mansion and the White House, sees Mr. Cheney’s helicopter going to and from the White House. Cleaners, neighbors – so much for secrecy in the age of terrorism.