One day during the early investigations into Enron's balance-sheet shenanigans, Enron CEO Kenneth Lay failed to show up for a hearing and was rumored to have disappeared.

"I'm thinking," David Letterman later declared, "has somebody checked Dick Cheney's pockets?"

["When that crazy gunman started firing shots at the White House [in 2001], the press spokesman said that Bush was working out in the gym while Vice President Dick Cheney was hard at work at his desk," Jay Leno once quipped. "See, now that the election's over, they're not even trying to hide who's really running the country anymore."]