Your midsummer hits and misses.

[July 6th, 2005] WINNERS

Gay couples with a taste for the Great White North now have the option of getting hitched anywhere in Canada. The Canadian Parliament's approval of same-sex marriages makes Oregon lawmakers' inability to do the same all the more glaring.

Bruce Warner won the toughest job in local government: running the scandal-plagued Portland Development Commission (see page 8 for more). But on the plus side, Warner will make more money than the mayor and have a shot at resuscitating the city's vital, big-budget urban-renewal agency.

Portland enviros got an "atta boy'' over the weekend in The New York Times from columnist (and Oregon native) Nicholas Kristof. Kudos came for the city's success in curbing carbon emissions, a development Kristof said Bush should bone up on in the fight against global warming.

Anti-abortion advocates are mobilizing the troops after Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement from the nation's high court. Here's those worthies' first chance to pressure Bush to move a swing vote on abortion to their side of the street.

LOSERS

While helmets may never be cool, Portland cyclists should strap them on given the recent death toll. Four local cyclists have died in recent weeks after collisions with motorists-more bike deaths than the typical number of fatalities in Multnomah County over an entire year.

The family of Kendra James lost its $12 million lawsuit last week when a federal jury ruled Portland police officer Scott McCollister did not use excessive force in fatally shooting James two years ago during a traffic stop.

Downstate Republican legislator Jeff Kropf was outed last week by the Statesman-Journal in Salem for skipping votes in the Oregon House. The reason Kropf missed a good deal of House business: He was subbing for Lars Larson on KXL radio.

Portland's Office of Emergency Management got dinged hard in an audit for how its leaders manage the agency responsible for responding to terrorist attacks and natural disasters. The audit's release came after Mayor Tom Potter asked the director to resign and decided to eliminate the assistant director's job.