Jury selection for the trials of Kenny Boy Lay and Jeff Skilling is underway, and if Judge Sim Lake has his way, it'll be all over today as well. Here's some background on the process.

The Chron is gearing up its blog machinery for the event. There's an Enron Trial Watch blog, which is mostly being written by reporter Mary Flood and which seems to be staging ground for some stuff that will wind up in news stories. There's a lawyer-written group blog called Enron Legal Commentary that appears to be serving the Tim McCarver role to the Trial Watch's Joe Buck. And of course Loren Steffy is there, too.

I have no idea how this trial will resolve itself. After the prosecution's fumble in the Enron Broadband case, I'd have to make the defense a slight favorite, their whines about biased jurors notwithstanding. (They can renew their change-of-venue motion after jury selection is complete, as my dad the former judge reminded me this weekend.) One thing I do feel confident about is that no matter what does happen, Kenny Boy will not reclaim his reputation. How could he? Even if the defense proves that everything he did was legal, in the end his company wound up in a ditch, and it happened on his watch. At the very least, no one is ever going to think of him as a dynamic CEO any more. And if he wants to be thought of as a great philanthropist/humanitarian again, I say actions will speak louder than words. Let him donate a big chunk of whatever wealth he's got left to charity, and find himself a project that he can dedicate himself and his time to, like Jimmy Carter and Habitat for Humanity. That's how you fix a broken reputation: Penance.