Never Steal Anything Small

King Abdullah of Jordan has agreed to pardon Ahmed Chalabi, the controversial Iraqi political leader, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison for fraud after his bank collapsed with $300m (£160m) in missing deposits in 1989.

and...

A bankruptcy judge Tuesday approved United Airlines' historic plan to dump its underfunded pension plans on a federal agency, a move United said it needed to survive but one that could trigger a damaging strike against the airline.

At a hearing in Chicago packed with scores of United employees and retirees, union officials and lawyers, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Eugene Wedoff said United could shift all four of its major pension plans — and their combined $6.6 billion of liabilities — to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

...and

A federal appeals court in Washington dismissed a lawsuit yesterday that sought to force Vice President Cheney to turn over records of private meetings his office held in 2001 to shape the administration's energy policy...

In lawsuits filed four years ago, the advocacy groups Judicial Watch and Sierra Club contended there was evidence that members of large energy corporations and industry groups effectively became members of Cheney's energy task force and helped write the administration's energy policy, parts of which are now before Congress. Suing under the open meetings law, the two groups sought minutes of task force meetings and records showing who attended...

...Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University professor of constitutional and environmental law, said the court's ruling creates "an absurd standard" because it required the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch to prove their assertions but prohibited them from gathering records or information from the White House.

"It's impossible to establish that industry substantially participated in these meetings, if you deny them basic discovery needed to show those facts," Turley said.

Or, as was once said:

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common;
But lets the greater felon loose
Who steals the common from the goose.