What do U2, plagiarism, and moist toilet paper have in common? They produced great Frays this week—scroll through and read the Fray Notes at the end of the articles. Unsurprisingly, Enron was the other big topic, yet again …

Subject: Don't Even Bother Trying
Re: "Chatterbox: Blaming Liberalism for Enron"
From: Will Allen
Date: Wed Jan 23  11:06 a.m. PT

Just as legal efforts to quell the demand of millions of drug users are doomed to failure, the legal efforts to quell the demand of millions of citizens to seek favor from elected officials will be doomed to failure. People do not see influencing politicians by helping them be re-elected as a fundamentally illegitimate act, in the manner that they see bank robbery as such, therefore any regime you cook up to prevent it will be relentlessly, successfully, evaded, just as attempts to prevent drug use are relentlessly, successfully evaded. Furthermore, the more you attempt to make illegal that activity that millions of citizens wish to engage in, the more the valuable will become those third parties that help in the effort. It really is simple black market behavior…

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Subject: Liberals Who Can Count
Re: "Frame Game: Enron Evasions"
From: Charlie Heath
Date: Wed Jan 23  5:04 p.m. PT

I suspect the political reach of the Enron scandal will depend on a couple things. First, are there any good journalists on the liberal side of the spectrum that can understand the numbers and the political processes bought? Second, can they translate that into something with mainstream legs? Since this just involves money and politics, the Republican Party has a chance of escaping with only minor damage.

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Subject: Don't Kill the Messenger
Re: "Foreigners: Kill the Messenger"
From: Michael Maiello
Date: Tue Jan 22 9:51 a.m. PT

So, you disagree with what they cover and how they cover it—that doesn't make a media outlet into a legitimate military target. There's no point in talking about freedom of expression if there's not freedom to have an opinion. Besides, if we follow Anne [Applebaum]'s lead here, Fox News might be in trouble.

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