Earlier on, I have carped about using the Constitution as license for publishing porn, irresponsible possession of firearms and the random slaughter of unborn babies. My present target is the Fifth Amendment, billed as an individual's protection against self-incrimination, but only sometimes protecting the truly innocent.

I first became aware of its use many years ago, during a Senatorial inquiry into organized crime. As I recall it, either Frankie Costello or Jake "Greasy Thumb" Gusek intoned the memorable words: "I refuse to answer da question on the grouns it would intend to criminate me."

On February 12, 2002 , I heard and saw on C-Span a more grammatical echo of the same copout, this time from the former CEO of what was formerly the seventh largest corporation in the USA.

He who had presided over what may prove to be the most spectacular con in our history, would have had us believe that, in spite of a passionate wish to spill his guts about the Enron debacle, he was reluctantly yielding to advice of counsel in refusing to answer questions.

To give some usually devious devils their due, the queries he would not answer were articulated in minute detail by a panel of Senators whose outrage was genuine.

Questions like: "What did you know? When did you know it? What didn't you know that a CEO should have known? How did so many insiders pocket so many millions in profits while the company was going into the financial toilet? How, concurrently, could even more millions disappear of the pension funds and savings of misinformed employees? And how could you, while an empire was collapsing around you and hierarchal rats were deserting the ship, have brazenly proclaimed the organization's health and its brilliant future?"

He didn't - and didn't have to - answer any of those questions, or the hundreds more that were left unasked. Never mind, implicitly, that thousands of lives have been ruined, thousands of dreams destroyed, and the public's confidence shaken in both the stock market and the watchdogs charged with its oversight. (Maybe "overlook" would be a more appropriate word.)

Mind you, as each of the Senators (lawyers all) reiterated, the inscrutable Kenneth Lay cowered in a constitutional cocoon so sacred as to be beyond attack, or even question . Yet there hovered over the proceedings the smell of smoking guns and the stench of rotting procedural corpses.

One (this one, anyway) is prompted to ask why there is not a point at which the common good overrides individual prerogatives. If there is to be a civilized society, no right, constitutional or otherwise, is (or should be) unlimited. Were this to be otherwise, this same one would be free to shout "FIRE" in a crowded subway train, practice target shooting on a Kmart parking lot, or distribute "Hustler" to kindergarten kids.

So many were so badly hurt in the Enron matter, and so many institutional standards damaged, that it makes little sense to permit one little man, or even a larger group of equally little men, to conceal the truths that would not only bring the miscreants to justice, but build safeguards against similar disasters in the future.

As in the past, rebuttals to this opusette will include the "slippery slope" argument, which holds that any exception to strict constitutional adherence is a first step toward the total abolition of the freedoms we hold dear as Americans.

While conceding that one giant step would raise that fear, it's difficult to be concerned about a slippery slope when already at the bottom of an ugly pit.

Among the issues that shriek for resolution is whether the "old boy" coalition of executives, accountants and directors was a phenomenon unique to Enron, or a carcinogen infecting other large companies. If the latter, that cancer will be spreading while politicians posture, barristers bicker, bureaucrats scramble to cover their asses, and pundits prowl the field of battle, bayoneting the wounded.

Meanwhile, I'm in the ranks of those who, if we are ever involved in activity as unconscionable as this one, secretly hope that the book gets thrown at us.

Otherwise, the so-called "pursuit of justice" is just as bad a joke as the motto engraved at the entrance to the Supreme Court: "We who labor here seek only the truth."

Me upset? Heaven forfend! When the going gets tough, I myself have been known to reach out to the Fifth...of Crown Royal.
Cheers!