The problem is that you are performing lengthy operations in the event
thread.  The button doesn't "stay pressed," it's simply that your GUI
isn't being updated as long as you're performing your actions.  Think
about running your actions in a worker thread:

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event) {
 button.setEnabled(false);
 Thread t = new Thread() {
   public void run() {
//you do that voodoo that you do so well--ie, perform your task
     SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
       public void run() {
         button.setEnabled(true);
       }
     });
   }
 };
 t.start();
}

That way, you're only doing GUI things in your event thread, and
time-consuming things in another thread.

Walter Gildersleeve
Freiburg, Germany

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you can't do long tasks on the Swing thread.

See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/swingthreads.html