Winner: Perhaps the best thing to come out of the 2011 legislative session was an awakening of civic involvement. Sometimes it takes a truly horrible bill, like HB477, which exempts broad swaths of communication from public access, to stir the masses. Now several groups are uniting behind a referendum petition to overturn the new law. It's a long shot — lawmakers have set the bar high for such petitions — but the level of public outrage is strong enough that it might just succeed.
Loser: However innocent the reasons, Copper Hills High School's decision to give out beer steins and champagne glasses as prom mementoes this year was in poor taste. Even if a student there had not died of alcohol poisoning last month, these symbols linking celebrations with alcohol are inappropriate for teenagers.
Loser: Speaking of high schools, the Journal of Addiction Medicine reported this week that more than 40 percent of high school students nationwide have tried marijuana, and that more than 30 percent have used it in the last year. Clearly, more education is needed into the harmful side-effects of this drug, which include memory loss and attention deficit, not to mention an increased likelihood that students will drop out.
Winner: It may have happened 30 years ago, but President Ronald Reagan's security detail deserves praise for quick actions that saved his life in the aftermath of an assassination attempt by John Hinckley Jr. A Secret Service audio tape of transmissions from the president's limousine, released for the first time this week, shows how agents first thought the president had merely bruised his ribs. Within a minute, they changed course for a hospital — quick action that literally saved Reagan's life.