Maybe I've missed something, but what's the big deal? What is this all about?
This seems to have all been kicked off by the RickK incident. An admin broke a rule and was treated accordingly, as any other editor who knew the rule would've been, admin or not. Job done. (The fact he threw a hissy fit as a result is neither here nor there. That's his problem.)
Then we seemed to make some quantum leap - now trying to put up all kinds of test and hoops for admins to jump through - why, for goodness sake?! Do we have hoards of marauding admins blocking genuine users at will, deleting stuff randomly, and protecting pages when they shouldn't? Er, no, we don't.
What we do have in the admins is a community of people who have been recognized as being trust-worthy. They work together and discuss problems and far more often than not come to reasonable, logical solutions.
Dan