High Cost Of Admitting No Wrong $180 million, if you’re Millenium Partners. That’s what it agreed to pay over a mutual fund trading scheme that lined its pockets at the expense of other investors.

Quote Of The Week “Morons are running all these companies. In corporate America ‘it’s survival of the unfittest.’ Time Warner is the poster boy for what I’m talking about.” Carl Icahn, corporate raider who teamed with Lazard’s ‘Bid ‘em up Bruce’ Wasserstein in a shareholder war with Time Warner, as quoted in Bloomberg.

Uncle Sham, Hic, Wants You So you’ve been out of uniform for five years, soaking up a lot of well-earned rum, and you decide to reup because your money and girlfriend ran out at the same time. Surprise, now you get your old rank back and don’t have to go through basic training. I don’t know if you get a weapon.

Questions of the Week
1. So what do you think of the U.S. Military planting stories in Iraqi papers?
2. Are scissors under four inches safer than scissors over four inches? Are screwdrivers under seven inches safer than screwdrivers over seven inches? Are you concerned that people that know as much about terrorists as you and I are telling us what is and what isn’t safe? Are you concerned that we are actually listening to them?
3. Should we be surprised that now released 1964 secret documents show that Vietnam War intelligence was deliberately doctored? Will it take forty years to reach the same conclusions about Iraq?
4. Does anyone understand our Iraq policy, or is that the policy? Shouldn’t victory be defined when we get every last American soldier outta’ there?
5. Why did twenty-six planes known to be operated by CIA companies make 307 flights in Europe since 1971? Is the CIA operating secret prisons in Europe?
6. Just how big of a screw-up (please choose one or insert your own: horrific, gargantuan, unspeakable) will the Federal Drug Discount Program end up being?
7. If scientists, say, go to college on a science scholarship and don’t need to know anything about football, why should a football player going to college on a football scholarship need to know anything about science, or math, or anything else? Is a failed football player any less likely to succeed than a failed scientist?

Pfizer Pfunny Business Last June, when whistle blower Peter Rost, a Pfizer VP, went on Sixty Minutes to talk about drug pricing and subsequently found that his corporate cellphone and e-mail accounts had been turned off, Pfizer said it had not deliberately disconnected his service.

The Donald In LA Amid sagging ratings (what took so long), The Apprentice is moving west. Good Riddance. The Donald is so over. Please take Martha too.

Clostridium Difficile As if the H5N1 bird flu strain weren’t enough to clutter our meager brains, now C-diff, as those in the know seem to call it, is reaching into our rectums and causing…well, the runs. If you have severe diarrhea, see your doc.

Corporate Crook Update
1. Lord Black pleaded not guilty to ripping off Hollinger, the publishing conglomerate he helped create. He had to put up a $20 million bond secured by his Palm Beach digs and the seized proceeds of his Park Avenue pied-á-terre and promise to travel only in the U.S. and Canada. Question: Since he gave up his Canadian citizenship to become a Lord, why doesn’t Canada send him packing?

Warning: Keep Bag Away From Management Fifteen makers of plastic bags were fined $325 million by the European Commission for a twenty-year price fixing scheme. The Finns, Spaniards, and Germans are the bad guys. The pesky Brits ratted them out, and they’re not even in the union.

Our Friends in Washington Update
1. Is Carl Rove manufacturing grand jury responses to fit evolving evidence?
2. Randy Cunningham, eight-term Republican from San Diego, California, bit the dust amid a Pentagon contractor kickback scandal. Republicans far and wide are running for cover lest they get smattered with the brown stuff of fallout.
3. Trent Who? I guess Trent Lott, deposed as Senate majority leader three years ago for sticking his racist foot in his racist mouth, figures so many Republicans are up to their udders in manure he might worm his way back into power.

It’s 6:00 PM, Do You Know Where You’re Telemarketers Are? I hate the idea of the government’s ‘Do Not Call’ list. I don’t want the government telling me who can and can’t call. Besides, they are doing a lousy job since they allow all kinds of annoying calls to get through. Why can’t our service provides block all calls that we specify, the keys here being all and we?