It's not online, but this week's New Yorker features an article by Jeffrey Toobin about the difficulties prosecutors have in constructing a winnable criminal case against former Enron executives and BushLite Crony Capitalism poster-boys Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. One problem is the unwillingness of lower-level executives to rat out their former bosses; none of the trials are scheduled to commence until the middle of next year, reducing any sense of urgency on the defendant's behalf to cop a plea. The trial judge presiding in the Andrew Fastow case, U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth Hoyt, is an interesting character in his own right, sort of a Southwest version of Janice Rogers Brown. Nominated by Ronald Reagan, Judge Hoyt, an African- American, once opined in a 1997 environmental case that

"...physical differences among races were the product of their environments. 'Why do you think Chinese people are short? Because there is so much damn wind over there they need to be short. Why are they so tall in Africa? Because they need to be tall. It's environmental,' he said. 'I mean, you don't jump up and get a banana off a tree if you're only 4 feet. If you're 7 feet tall and you're standing in China, then you're going to get blown away by that Siberian wind, aren't you?' "

So much for Yao Ming. He later recused himself. More recently, Judge Hoyt threw out the conviction last August of a man who had driven a truck into an abortion clinic, holding that the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act was unconstitutional.