Above the law.

• Author: Rundles, Jee
• Position: Jrundles@cobizmag.com

AFTER FOLLOWING THE MEWS IN FEBRUARY, I began thinking about fairness. And honor.

First came the indictments of several former executives of Qwest for shenanigans involving inflated financial reporting. Those arrested on criminal charges, and several of their former colleagues named in civil actions, were all high-level, but not the highest level executives at the company. If these guys were criminally misstating revenues, then how is it the CEO and the other top brass didn't know or weren't involved?

That the former senior management of Qwest was inept is without question --even if some executives were paid tens of millions of dollars in bonuses--but why is it the lieutenants get arrested and the generals just fade away?

And speaking of lieutenants and generals, it seems as though men who wear Air Force and Air Force Academy uniforms can get away with the most heinous crimes because they are members of a special, and tacit, fraternity that takes care of its own. It is a crying shame that we have to honestly look at our teen-age daughters and recommend that they not go to college at the U.S. Air Force Academy For that matter, it's no place for our sons.

Also recently in the news were reports of Denver police officers playing fast and loose with the rules governing their "moonlighting" activities for extra cash. And some of these people were very senior officers, so it raises the question about who is supervising the supervisors?

And then, in a seemingly unrelated kind of report, there was news recently that massive numbers of Colorado kids who enter the ninth grade never make it to high school graduation. When those numbers are broken down by ethnic group, the news is even worse as it applies to Hispanics and African-Americans.

What I see in all of this are two things.

First, even though from time to time the most egregious behavior draws punishment and calls for reform, we keep finding example after example after example of people who act as if they are above the law. Second, but certainly not any less, there...