The News-Item's cheers and jeers from the past week of news:
Jeers to some members of the Shamokin Area School Board for their handling of the process to hire a new football coach. It's become an embarrassing mess, and one of the leading candidates has withdrawn his name from contention. The new coach, when he is selected, will now have to repair wounds inflicted on the program before he can focus on the team. Also, going forward, from the board, fans and others, it would be good to hear concerns about the role model characteristics of the candidates, rather than merely their win-loss records.
Cheers to Henry Hynoski on scoring his first NFL touchdown on Dec. 30. He'd surely trade it in for a win that would have sent the Giants to the playoffs, but it is a milestone nonetheless, and it capped an exciting 2012 for Hyno, who won a Super Bowl championship in February. His status as hometown hero is further entrenched.
Jeers to Congress, whose actions over the past week have further disgusted Americans already fed up with Washington's antics. Political battles are expected over such difficult circumstances as were presented with the fiscal cliff, but when the dust settled, spending cuts were put on the back burner for another two months, while Hollywood studios - which enjoyed a record $10.8 billion in movie ticket sales in 2012 - received $266 million in tax breaks. After all that?
Finally, cheers to animal lovers like Tom and Barbara Albert, of Coal Township, who went above and beyond to adopt a shelter dog that survived six weeks unattended outside its Norristown home after its master died. In telling this story, we couldn't help think it was retribution for what happened locally one year ago in January, when poor Harper was discarded in Coal Township. Fortunately, that story had a happy ending, too.
