It's not that the stories are chapters straight out of Penthouse Letters: Different Strokes, Serendipity, Someone's Watching.

Here's the real problem:

For years, the boys have been trying to use the "everyone's doing it" defense on me to cover their own mischief -- with little success.

But it turns out "everyone's doing it" works quite well as a defense if you get before the right judge.

Especially if the boss has been treating different troopers differently when they get caught with their pants down.

That's what we learned this week out of the scandalously lively court papers filed in the case of a trooper fired for sexual shenanigans.

The trooper forthrightly admitted to his own diddling. But his highly effective defense was that plenty of others were doing it, too -- and nobody else got fired.

We learned about troopers having sex in patrol cars and in uniform (well, partly), lining up hotel rooms during their shifts and on patrol trips. We learned about one supervising trooper who allegedly had an affair with a subordinate's wife.

And we learned that one trooper kept his walkie-talkie nearby during on-duty trysts, while another trooper disrobed in his lover's car and left his loaded service pistol under the seat in his apparent postcoital haze.

Young children discovered it there later. Yikes.

Another trooper, the court record indicates, was demoted and given a 5 percent pay reduction for having sex with his ex-wife while on duty, making threatening phone calls to her, using his patrol car to stop her, and the list goes on.

This was after several other disciplinary issues including having on-duty sex multiple times, making death threats on the ex-wife and conducting an extramarital affair. (The latter brought a one-day suspension.)

Reading through the paperwork, I couldn't make sense of the patrol's policy, which seems to have veered wildly from puritanical to permissive.

I also couldn't help but wonder: Who knew I worked at such a deadly boring place?

To my knowledge, the cubicles on the third floor of The News & Observer have never seen the sort of action that has taken place in some of those patrol cars.

The judge ended up ruling in favor of the fired trooper, underscoring that what's good for the gander is good for the other ganders, on duty and off, as well as the captain ganders and other muckety-mucks.

If it's true that everyone's doing it, all such cases need to be treated evenly.

So, if the state's appeal isn't successful and the judge's ruling stands, the fired officer could eventually be reinstated -- with back pay, and a rep for beating the system while getting a little nooky on the job.

If that does happen, please, please, don't tell my sons.

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