The winners and the losers

Winner: A group of students from the University of Utah's College of Architecture and Planning deserves kudos for coming up with a plan to make some of Salt Lake City's dark and uninviting public spaces come to life. This week, the students presented the city with a plan they call the City Narrows Project. It shows how interconnected the city's public spaces are and how, with a little makeover, those spaces could attract people. Unused alleyways could become the future home of shops and restaurants and be transformed into enjoyable urban nooks. Sounds great.

Loser: This isn't the time for Utah lawmakers to raise their own pay. We recommend they reject a proposal by the Executive Appropriations Committee that would hike a lawmaker's salary from $117 a day to $130. We've long suggested that lawmakers take a hefty pay increase in exchange for enacting tough new ethics laws that forbid all gifts from lobbyists. State lawmakers really do work hard for little official pay. But all of those arguments fly out the window on a year like this one, where everyone else is being asked to economize. Unfortunately, this pay raise automatically takes effect unless lawmakers specifically vote to do otherwise. Here's hoping.

Winner: Matthew S. Petersen of Mapleton has been elected chairman of the Federal Election Commission. That's quite an honor for the BYU graduate and for the state of Utah.

Loser: Pornography damages hearts and minds. That was the conclusion of a recent study by the director of the Center for Research on Marriage and Religion, which is part of the Family Research Council. There was little of surprise in the report. Previous studies have shown how addictive pornography can be, as well as how it distorts perceptions of the opposite sex or, in the worst cases, children. Perhaps it is better to focus on the study's conclusions for avoiding the problem. Develop a close family life, good relations with a spouse and child, and monitor what children do on the Internet. Also, society should finally realize that this is a problem deserving of much more official attention and action.