(FORTUNE Magazine) – One day back in the golden 1950s, when a juvenile version of the present writer was learning the ropes at FORTUNE, he found himself at a staff meeting called to discuss conflicts of interest. Eons later, we remember nothing about this event except for one luminous detail. The executive editor had just finished explaining that it might be churlish for a writer to turn down a Yuletide bottle of Scotch from a friendly news source, but that it would be mandatory for us all to reject more substantial gifts -- a case of Scotch, for example. At this point, a staff wisenheimer raised his hand and broached the very question we were wondering about but were too timid to ask: ''How about half a case?'' Oddly enough, we do not recall the answer -- doubtless something still negative -- but the episode vaulted into memory when we came to the tale of the HUD inspector in Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch, a pronunciamento hot off the word processor at the federal Office of Government Ethics (OGE). Subpart B, 2635.202(c)(3) of this document tells us that the 3.3 million members of the executive branch must not take gifts that ''would cause a reasonable person to question the employee's impartiality . . .'' So what kinds of gifts are we talking about? The example in the text describes a lady from the Housing and Urban Development Department who is inspecting a building to determine whether HUD would insure a mortgage loan, and who gets offered a bottle of wine by the building's owner. The wine, it turned out, is verboten under OGE guidelines, but her ''acceptance of the customary courtesy of a cup of coffee and a donut would be proper.'' Regrettably left unanalyzed is the problem of two cups of coffee and a mushroom omelet. We first heard about the OGE's latest effort from a somewhat misleading Washington Post article whose author was totally preoccupied with the media lunch issue and left us thinking this was the sole subject of Standards. The rule about lunch is that reporters may now pick up the tab when interviewing bureaucrats -- previously, the government's honor required the check to be split -- provided that what goes down the government guy's gullet not have a market value exceeding $25. Fascinating detail: The rules allow the reporter to swill away without limit even though in some venues the $25 ceiling could leave his source topping out after martinis and an appetizer. Or don't you find that fascinating? The OGE has much more than lunch on its mind. The guidelines, occupying 37 pages of densely packed type in the July 23 Federal Register, also dwell heavily on gifts. An avalanche of text bars gifts from subordinates to their bosses; then a mini-avalanche offers a variety of exceptions. Gifts of less than $10 are allowed under a de minimis rule. You are also allowed to bring a bottle of wine to the boss's house when he invites you for dinner (and the wine may cost more than $10). Gifts from folks not in the government present other problems. Here the limit is $25, and executive branchers must add up the value of all their under-$25 gifts to ensure that the total from any one source not exceed $100 in a calendar year. But 2835.204(h), arguably the most amazing passage in the guidelines, tells us that OGE, which is run by a presidential appointee, has nobly decided to exempt the President and Vice President from these , aggregation rules, in part because George's and Dan's ''personal conduct is closely scrutinized by the public and the press.'' Lengthily dealt with in the guidelines are numerous moral dilemmas involving human interaction between government contractors and civil servants. An example tells of the purchasing agent for the Veterans Administration who often meets with pharmaceutical folks. One day a kindly drug merchant shows up in his office at lunch time bearing gifts -- a pastrami sandwich and soft drink, specified to have a market value below $6. Mulling this colorful scenario (we assume the pastrami was mentioned for color), OGE allows that there is no violation in accepting the lunch once but sternly warns against doing so every month. Solomonic, eh? Bureaucrats are also barred from accepting cash and other valuable awards for their government service, but here too there are exceptions. Our own favorite is the one that allows a scientist at the National Institutes of Health to accept the Nobel Prize for Medicine even though lucre comes with it. The guidelines are not yet operative, and will become so, perhaps somewhat revised, only after a 60-day comment period. Having now staggered through the complete text -- there ought to be an award for that -- assimilated hundreds of nit-picking distinctions, and pondered endless examples that are supposed to clarify issues but only raise more questions, we confidently comment that none of the above is going to elevate ethical standards in Washington.