POW-MIA FLAG INCIDENT SHOWS WHY GOOD JUDGMENT IS IMPORTANT TO APPLYING ALL THE RULES

A fill-in postmaster ordered that the POW-MIA flag at the Cape Girardeau Area Mail Processing Center be taken down because it violated postal regulations. Fortunately, after learning all the facts about why the flag was flying there, he had a change of heart and permitted it to go back up.

The flag has flown in front of the center in Cape West Business Park since 1992, when employees, many of them veterans, constructed a war memorial. The temporary postmaster, Rodney Bray, ordered it down because Congressional Defense Authorization regulations permit the flag to be flown just six days a year.

To make matters worse for the center's employees, the order to take it down came just before Memorial Day.

One can hardly find fault with flying a flag more than six days a year to commemorate U.S. servicemen taken prisoner or missing in action, particularly at a federal facility. Bray did the right thing in deciding that this was one rule that needed an exception.