Interesting. Seems in the wee hours of last Friday morning, Mr. Ex-"Big Swinging Dick" lost it, and began his latest charade.

You may recall the first one was creating something from nothing on a huge scale, the world's best-ever, most intricate Ponzi scheme, that crashed and burned all around him.

Unlike his buds Andrew Fastow and Richard Causey, who realized the gig was up and copped pleas, sending them to prison for ten or so years as opposed to the rest of their lives, Skilling's so nuts and full of himself, he went before Congress and testified under oath that others had deceived him and that he'd done nothing wrong.

In one weird way, he was the smartest of them all, for a while: he resigned and sold his stock for hundreds of millions of dollars while the company was still twisting in the air during its unraveling.

Then, having perjured himself under oath, and being confronted with this fact by the Feds after they indicted him, he saw that his copping a plea wasn't going to get him nearly the relatively sweet deal his ex-cohorts had arranged for themselves.

That's when he realized he really was going to the Big House for a long, long time, and that there was no way around it.

Or was there? What if he were insane, and could cop a plea under that ruse? Looks like he's trying it out on the big stage, not even bothering to get the kinks out in New Haven.

Here's the story, from Globeandmail.com:

Former Enron Corp. chief executive officer Jeffrey Skilling was taken to a Manhattan hospital early Friday after people called police saying he was pulling at their clothes and accusing them of being FBI agents, a police source said.

Police took Mr. Skilling to the hospital after finding him at 4 a.m. at the corner of Park Avenue and East 73rd Street, and determining he might be an "emotionally disturbed person," the source said.

Police did not charge Mr. Skilling. They took him to New York Presbyterian Hospital for observation. Hospital officials did not immediately comment on the case. Messages left for his lawyers were not immediately returned.

Mr. Skilling was at two bars in Manhattan - American Trash and the Voodoo Lounge - where he allegedly ran up to patrons and pulled open their clothes, the source said.

"He was shouting at them, 'You're an FBI agent and you're following me,' " the source said.

Mr. Skilling allegedly did the same thing to people on the street, the source added. He was with his wife at the time.

He was described as being intoxicated and highly uncooperative when he was approached by police, the source said.

He has been charged with fraud, insider trading and other crimes in the colossal collapse of Enron.