I seem to have stirred up an interesting discussion by starting this thread.

Speaking of Enron, it was in the news the other day that a former Enron accountant responsible for much of the cooking-the-books was finally sentenced......to one year probation, he is not allowed to leave his home. Enron's fraud cost a lot of people a lot of money, and some of them their life savings. If that's all the punishment a crook like that gets, it shows that we in this nation are no longer willing to hold responsible those who commit crimes. Well, unless of course you write a bad check to buy groceries, and then if you can't make bail you actually DO spend time behind bars. And I would add that many others of those culpable for the Enron fraud who were jailed got out on appeal. Amazingly, the courts were accepting the "Nuremburg" defense: "I vas just following orders!" Uh huh, we didn't accept that as a defense when Nazis tried to use it, but now it's an acceptable excuse for a crime.