Throughout the week over at Securities Docket, I highlight the most interesting columns and blog posts from around the web on the subjects of SEC enforcement and securities litigation. Here is a digest of my picks for the week ending March 4.

For Directors at DHB Industries, S.E.C. Keeps the Bar Low
New York Times | Floyd Norris | Mar 4, 2011
When a vast accounting fraud is disclosed, or when a chief executive is caught looting a company, it is to be expected that the Securities and Exchange Commission will bring civil charges against the responsible executives. In egregious cases, criminal prosecution may follow. But what happens to the corporate directors who were supposed to be watching over management? Usually, nothing.

Congress and the SEC's Starvation Diet
Huffington Post | Bevis Longstreth | Mar 3, 2011
The SEC should review all its responsibilities in light of available funds, and decide what it can undertake with sufficient funding to assure success and what it must declare publicly it lacks the funds to undertake. This review should involve a prioritization of its responsibilities, such that its most important functions are preserved with assured funding and its least important functions are abandoned.

The Insider Trading Scandal: Is It the Crime or the Prosecution?
Huffington Post | Zachary Karabell | Mar 3, 2011
In essence, this investigation and its prosecutions raise the question of whether we are criminalizing behavior simply because it is deemed immoral and allowing prosecutors too much latitude to pry into personal relationships. Both the left and the right are wary of the potential abuses of government investigatory power, and the United States has nurtured a long and powerful tradition of wariness of the claims of officials to be on the side of the angels in pursuing wrong-doing.

Wall Street needs this beast
National Law Journal | Daniel J. Morrissey | Feb 28, 2011
During the congressional hearings on Madoff, one SEC critic, Harry Markopolos, explained the commission's ineptitude with this comment on the low pay of its staff: "When you pay peanuts, you get monkeys." A strong, well-funded SEC must not be a partisan issue. Congress should give the reinvigorated commission a much-needed vote of confidence by fully funding it at the levels Dodd-Frank requires.

An Interview With Bernie Madoff
nymag.com | Steve Fishman | Feb 28, 2011
One evening, my home phone rang. You have a collect call from Bernard Madoff, an inmate at a federal prison, a recording announced. And there he was.