Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bearcatbob who wrote (226461)	2/12/2002 8:35:34 AM
From: Selectric II	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

In Defense of Kenneth Lay washingtonpost.com Tuesday, February 12, 2002; Page A24 FORMER ENRON chairman Kenneth Lay is due to testify today before a Senate panel. He has already announced that he will assert his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, so you might wonder what the point of going through the entire exercise will be. How naive. It will serve three very critical purposes: Getting senators on TV, getting senators on TV and getting senators on TV. Oh, yes. It will also humiliate a witness who remains, lest senators forget, innocent until proven guilty. Mr. Lay isn't a sympathetic figure; nor are the Enron executives who were dragged up to Capitol Hill by a House subcommittee to take the Fifth last week. But the attractiveness of the witnesses is not the issue. Congress should not be forcing any witnesses to testify solely in order to have television cameras filming their refusals. The whole idea of congressional hearings is that they elicit information that can then be used for legislating. When members know that a witness is not going to provide information, there is no legitimate purpose in creating a spectacle. The idea is for the members to appear to be holding the witnesses' feet to the fire, and to impute guilt to them through their refusal to answer questions. That may be fun for the members, but it tarnishes an important constitutional protection. There are, after all, legitimate reasons why an innocent -- or largely innocent -- person might decline to testify under the current circumstances. Admittedly, this sort of grandstanding has a long history. But not all congressional investigative committees have stooped to it. Sen. Sam Ervin, who chaired the Senate's Watergate investigation, refrained. That's the way to go now, too. An investigation with a lot of ground to cover shouldn't waste time putting on a show -- even to shame Mr. Lay. © 2002 The Washington Post Company