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Never enough. If you're a Republican businessman, being a wealthy CEO isn't enough. You feel entitled to backdate your stock options to swindle even more, as did Gregory Reyes of Brocade Communications, whom a jury found guilty of 10 counts of securities fraud. Nine of the charges carry a potential sentence of 20 years each.

What makes him a Republican? Democrats generally don't give $50,000 to the RNC.

UPDATE: According to the account of the prosecution in the WSJ, Reyes didn't backdate options to enrich himself but rather to "to recruit and retain employees, and then repeatedly falsified meeting minutes to hide the practice from accountants and ultimately investors." And "Mr. Reyes is the latest in a series of white-collar defendants to be convicted of fraud after arguing they were too busy and had too many responsibilities to realize what they were doing wrong."

Very amusing defense, especially when you consider that Reyes "sold at least $380 million of shares he received before the company went public in 1999." For someone who, via intentionally and secretly backdating stock options, was illegally creating recruitment signing bonuses out of thin air, that line of logic sure sounds like the height of faux naiveté.

No matter how you slice it, he's still a Republican crook.

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