Meanwhile, the larger lessons of the backdating furor were drawn in an epic piece in May in the American Bar Association's ABA Journal. By freelance reporter Anna Stolley Persky, the piece connected the dots between (among other things) the backdating witch-hunt, the tainted prosecution of Sen. Ted Stevens, and the government's use of the vague "honest services" statute to criminalize various kinds of behavior post hoc (a practice the Supreme Court finally curbed earlier this year).

One critique can be found in the title of a book by Boston defense attorney Harvey Silverglate: "Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent." Mr. Silverglate believes that only a mobilization of "civil society" can stop what he calls rampant abuse of prosecutorial discretion.