The week, masticated.

[March 30th, 2005] WINNERS

Any roster of winners must include Melissa Borgaard , the SUV driver who survived both a 60-foot plunge off the Morrison Bridge and large gulps of Willamette River water. Credit Borgaard's survival to the quick-acting Fire Department rescue team and to some good, old-fashioned luck. Guess those signs telling drivers not to change lanes on the steel grating-and those "stay off your cell phone while driving" scolds-aren't so silly after all.

The forces of law and order notched a qualified but welcome win when ultra-terrifying "street family" godfather James Daniel Nelson copped a no-contest plea and landed a life-and-we-mean-life sentence. Prosecutors might have relished a chance to send Nelson to Death Row for the torture-murder of Jessica Williams. But a trial would have relied on testimony from Nelson's cohort of criminal street kids-hardly the most convincing crew.

Lars Larson , right-wing radiohead and local commander of the Busybody Brigade, must think he's died and gone to Karl Rove's personal suite in the Afterlife. With the City Council prepared to quit the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force (see page 10), national right-to-life-in-a-coma types preparing to target Oregon and Mayor Tom Potter refusing to support the Mrs. Oregon Pageant-which, as we all know, is a key pillar of the Repression-Lars has a banquet of ideological red meat in front of him.

LOSERS

The demographic whirlpool that's sucking Portland's schools towards Davy Jones' locker earned our increasingly childless city a raft of unwelcome ink. New York Times correspondent Tim Egan made Portland the focus of a story on plummeting kiddie populations in cities around the country. Hizzoner Tom Potter-known to his many grandchildren as Grandpa Cottage-Cheese Head-vows to stem the Great Pampers Exodus.

What? You mean, we're not guaranteed all that free gambling money? Oregon's bar and restaurant owners may need a blanket prescription for Zoloft as the state looks to hold on to a bigger hunk of video-crack skrilla. Proprietors attached to gambling's reverse-Robin Hood redistribution of wealth-from poor people to, well, them-are fighting like dogs to keep the cash.

Mud flaps? No problem! Boxer shorts? Go for it. But if you think you can prostitute the holy AMERICAN FLAG to sell BEER, you've got another think coming. Ever vigilant against The Threats We Face As a Nation, the federales cracked down on Rogue Ales' use of Ol' Glory in advertisements for its American Amber Ale. Could someone please fire off that no-flags memo to all those car dealerships?