Lawyer's comment isn't OK with OK

A comment from Ken Lay's attorney, Mike Ramsey, during yesterday's opening statements in the Enron trial has drawn the wrath of our hard-working, plain-spoken neighbors to the north. (We mean the folks in Oklahoma, not Huntsville.) In talking about Lay's responsibility (or not) for Enron's collapse, Ramsey told jurors:

Ken Lay has, does and will continue to accept responsibility for what happened at Enron ... But failure is not a crime. Bankruptcy is not a crime. If it were, we'd have to turn Oklahoma back into a penal colony because there would be so many people to lock up.

Hmm. Back into a penal colony? We glanced through Oklahoma's history and didn't find any mention of the state being a penal colony — there were cowboys and Indians, then oil and Socialists and hawks making lazy circles in the sky, but no prisoners. Ramsey's quote ran in the Chronicle's front-page story on the trial this morning and was picked up by NPR's Morning Edition, and some Okies got a little ticked off. One of the comments the Chron's Loren Steffy received:

When I heard it I missed the "back to." I rather assumed he meant that they'd need an Oklahoma-sized space to keep failed business people in. Of course adding "back to" suggests a misunderstanding of OK history. Oklahoma territory in its earliest years was regarded as a lawless place — rather the opposite of penal colony. One could interpret the settlement of Indian tribes in OK as a sort of punishment. It actually was in some cases. The settlement of many additional tribes after the civil war was punishment for the 5 tribes who had significant numbers fighting for the south. At any rate one can't really say we were ever a penal colony.

We imagine a group of downtrodden but determined Okies will join the people protesting various things outside the federal courthouse these days: big business, the government, Samuel Alito, etc. etc. Anyone for a rousing rendition of the state song?