A wisecracking, prankish Bush

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Feb 15, 2002

In 1879, President Hayes signed a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court.

In 1898, the U.S. battleship Maine mysteriously blew up in Havana Harbor, killing more than 260 crew members and bringing the United States closer to war with Spain.

In 1933, President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt escaped an assassination attempt in Miami that claimed the life of Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak.

In 1942, the British colony Singapore surrendered to the Japanese during World War II.

In 1965, Canada's new maple-leaf flag was unfurled in ceremonies in Ottawa.

In 1982, 84 men were killed when a huge oil-drilling rig, the Ocean Ranger, sank off the coast of Newfoundland during a fierce storm.

In 1989, the Soviet Union announced that the last of its troops had left Afghanistan, after more than nine years of military intervention.

Smaller than small?

NEW YORK (NYT) -- How much smaller can MP3 players get? The new MPIO-DMK player from Digital Global Network is so tiny that most of its 88-millimeter length is taken up by the single AAA battery that powers it for 10 hours. About the size of a lipstick case, the DMK comes in 32-, 64- and 128-megabyte versions, transfers music files through a standard USB connection and is compatible with both the Mac and PC. Its backlighted LCD screen can display song information in several languages.

It helps to have minuscule fingers to operate a player this small, but the five controls -- play/pause/on/off, volume up, volume down, hold and a jog dial -- handle most functions quickly and easily. Digital Global Network includes a belt clip, an arm band and a neck strap with the unit. The 128-megabyte model, which holds about four hours' worth of music, comes in silver and blue for $209. (It is not yet available in lipstick red.)

So Ken Lay walks into this bar...

HOUSTON (AP) -- Fill in your own punchline. Everyone else is doing it. Enron's collapse has been money in the bank for late-night comedians and other professional wiseacres.

"You know what Ken Lay had for breakfast this morning? Shredded wheat," Jay Leno jokes.

Dennis Miller asks: "Wouldn't it be great if all of Osama bin Laden's money was tied up in Enron stock?"

On Late Show With David Letterman, the bald man in a dark business suit sitting quietly in the audience isn't really Lay, but he plays him on TV. In recent days the silent actor has generated guffaws when introduced by Letterman as the former Enron chairman and chief executive.

With its colossal bankruptcy, the collapse of its stock, its document-shredding, its big contributions to both political parties and its Fifth Amendment-taking executives, Enron has been a comic windfall for funnymen. "It's kind of funny because people say this is a capitalist country and we really believe in capitalism," says Lawrence Mintz, an associate professor of American studies at the University of Maryland and editor in chief of the International Journal of Humor Research. "But while it is a country that holds socialism and communism as anathema, capitalism itself is not really beloved in this country either, especially at the very top -- the tycoons, the very wealthy, the manipulators. We love to see these guys screw up."