Illustration by Josh Hagler

"If there wasn't a war going on, Bush could be impeached due to the Enron affair." "It's even bigger than Whitewater." "Bush had better watch out!"

What? Are you serious? Or is this some "SNL" skit gone off course?

That is exactly what ran through my mind when I heard about Enron's fallout. I know that most of us are unclear about exactly what is going on, so let me indulge you for a minute.

Enron is a massive energy corporation that has four major components. Its Web site states it is best known for its role in the natural gas, electricity products, retail energy and bandwidth products industries.

It believes in the economic benefits of open and wholesale markets and claims to have initiated the wholesale natural gas and electricity markets in the United States. Well, that's all fine and dandy. Then where does the problem come from?

It seems that around the end of 1997, an Enron partner sold his stake in the company to another firm that Enron created, Chewco, which is run by another Enron officer. Enron proceeded to duplicate a series of sketchy transactions that concealed their financial dilemmas.

As time goes on, the company gets in more trouble. FORTUNE magazine even goes as far to say that Enron is "a largely impenetrable company" that is piling debt and keeping Wall Street in the dark. The company's Web site claims Enron raised its revenue more than 50 percent from 1999 to 2000. What's more is that it has a net income of more than $900 million. Now, Enron has admitted to overstating its income for the last four years. But why? And what happened in 2001 that caused this company to declare bankruptcy by Dec. 2?

Enron must have known it had problems from the start. Its CEO, Kenneth Lay, started calling Vice President (the ever-elusive) Dick Cheney and other Washington officials starting in April.

Some background as to why: In 1998, Long Term Capital Management avoided bankruptcy when the Federal Reserve Board helped to bail it out. But Enron was denied this opportunity. During the rest of 2001, top Enron executives resigned quickly, but Lay still felt his company was doing great.

Arthur Andersen was hired by Enron for financial and consulting services. Four days before its bankruptcy, the company received a memo telling them to destroy all documents except for "basic work papers."

Wait, isn't that illegal?

Especially when this company is obviously going through the wringer? If Enron destroyed the papers because it wanted to mislead investors, it is facing major fraud charges. There are 47 class actions filed against Enron as of now for illegally driving stockholders' investments into the ground through a 401K pension plan.

The federal investigators must prove willful intent to deceive, and the horizon looks dim for Enron.

Those bastards deserve it. Enron execs have deceived so many people who put their life savings into their "successful" company. What do these people do now?

And how does the presidency come into this?

As I said before, Lay approached top Bush officials with requests for help. Lay also happens to be a close buddy of the Bush family. These guys used to watch play-offs and eat pretzels together.

Lay gave Bush over $700,000 for his gubernatorial and presidential campaign. That must be where some of the suspicion is arising. How can a company be able to give so much money to Bush and other elected officials for their campaigns if it knows that it's losing business? Unless, it was promised certain favors. Hmm.

Andersen accountants are in a great deal of trouble as well. They destroyed many of the documents that might have cleared up this mess, and if they were intentionally destroying papers to protect themselves and Enron, this can be seen as a major no-no.

Lay tried to convince Commerce Secretary Don Evans and Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill for help. He was denied.

Hopefully, the administration did what it was supposed to: not use national money for a private business matter.

It seems there are a lot of speculations and assumptions when it comes to whether the administration did anything illegal, but the cloud of deception is hovering near the White House.

Enron exploited loads of people and their money, but is still making a fortune. The company isn't out of business yet. The ex-employees of Enron were invited back to the company office to get the beautiful plants that decorated their building · at a price. Yup, Enron is trying to sell plants to the same people who have lost thousands in Enron stock. Gee, isn't that nice?

This is an issue the American people need to stay tuned in too.