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The operator from hell. Item from the Associated Press: Bernard Ebbers, who as the once-swaggering CEO of WorldCom oversaw the largest corporate fraud in U.S. history, wept in court today after a judge sentenced him to 25 years in prison. The sentence was handed down three years after WorldCom collapsed in an $11 billion accounting fraud, wiping out billions of investor dollars.

If you’re glad that white collar criminals are finally facing tough punishment, press 1.

If you feel Ebbers should be confined to a room with former WorldCom investors, press 2.

If you feel sorry for Ebbers, press 3, and we’ll change your long-distance service without permission.

Lowering the bar. In a nation of laws, even the well-connected are supposed to answer for their mistakes.

Francine Boxer-Purtill qualifies as well-connected. She was Spokane County’s $93,500-a-year CEO until last August when she resigned after having been arrested on drunken-driving charges twice within three years. She was also interim director of Geiger Corrections Center. In 2001 she was found parked in the median along Interstate 90, her blood alcohol almost three times the legal level of .08 percent. A year ago, she was found asleep in the back of a vehicle that had slammed into a tree. Her blood alcohol then was only about twice the legal level.

The total sentence she received this week for drunken driving and second-degree reckless endangerment hardly reflects the Legislature’s determination for several years to discourage impaired drivers.

Visiting Judge Jerry Roach of Franklin County fined Boxer-Purtill $2,000 and, technically, sentenced her to a year in jail on each charge. Once the forgivenesses and conditions are added up, though, she won’t go to jail for even one year, or one day. She’ll be on electronic home monitoring for a month.

Preferential treatment? Let’s hope so.