Enron's Not Guilty

After more than a year of searching through company documents and persuading dozens of mid-level execs to testify against senior management, the Justice Department declares that Enron, on second thought, didn't do anything wrong.

"The whole thing was a big misunderstanding," John Ashcroft tells reporters. "Our bad." Enron's managers weren't really stealing millions and hiding their actions through deceptive accounting practices, Ashcroft explains; the company's transactions were just so mathematically intricate that the media and government investigators were too dumb to understand them.

What about the shredded documents? "I told you -- just trying to save money on firewood!" an angry Ken Lay, Enron's former CEO, tells stupefied reporters. "You guys really loused this one up. Good one."

The Power of One

In a noble effort to do his part to contribute to the U.S. economy's jobless recovery, CEO Larry Ellison orders that all non-core jobs at Oracle Corp. be outsourced, offshored and otherwise globalized. After workers at the company's Redwood Shores offices train their replacements in the Third World (who work for 1/20th of their salaries), there is only one U.S.-based Oracle employee left: Larry Ellison.

Eco-activists Doing Big Oil's Dirty Work?

The Smoking Gun uncovers documents proving that the Earth Liberation Front, the shadowy environmental group linked to the torching of several Southern California Hummer dealerships is actually funded by oil-industry money. Apparently, the petroleum-industrial complex funded the front group to try to smear the environmental movement and discredit the greenies' position on the human causes of global warming.

Snopes.com confirms the authenticity of photographs circulating on the Internet that show Dick Cheney wearing an E.L.F. cap while sipping snifters of brandy with oil execs. Attorney General John Ashcroft uses the PATRIOT Act to prosecute the vice president as a domestic terrorist and "make America safe for Americans."

But a spokesperson for ChevronTexacoMobilExxon chuckles at the accusation that the energy industry is trying to make itself look bad. "Don't be ridiculous -- that's like saying PETA is a front for the mink fur industry."

The assembled reporters gasp, then rush for the exits.

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