Some thoughts on the "Michael" affair:
With regards to contacting AOL, this would be most effective if done thoroughly, and (as you mentioned) by someone with some official connection to the Wikimedia Foundation (perhaps Jimbo). Probably the best thing to do would be for someone with access to server logs to dig up a lengthy list of IPs and the times they were used. Then the letter to AOL could include a large amount of evidence of repeated vandalism over an extended period despite multiple bannings. Having a few dozen IP address / time pairs might make it easier for them to track down the user account as well, assuming they can be motivated to do something.
Email's probably the best first option, but if no response is forthcoming perhaps a letter by registered mail might get some more attention.
As for additional powers to deal with things like this, one useful and power-neutral code addition would be something analogous to the sysop-quick-rollback, but for page moves. If I could click "unmove" to undo the effect of a move, that'd make it easier to deal with these things (we could just go down his user history and click "unmove" on all of them). Not being a PHP person, I'm not familiar with the wiki code, so have no idea how easy this would be to implement.
-Mark