Naughty and Nice 2004

Naughty: Merck, for spending millions to market the pain-reliever Vioxx to consumers long after the company knew it was unsafe.
Nice: Dr. David Graham, of the FDA's Office of Drug Safety, for fighting to keep dangerous drugs off the market.  

Naughty: Bernard Kerik, for turning an apartment donated for weary Ground Zero police and rescue workers into a love nest for his adulterous affairs.
Nice: Miramax Films, for putting the kibosh on Kerik's summer blockbuster biopic.

Naughty: Congress, for underfunding the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). allocating "$164 million less than needed to cover the expected 24 percent increase in home heating costs" this winter.
Nice: Richard Hamann and his wife, Donna, for paying the electricity bills for the entire town of Anthon, Iowa, because they wanted to give something back to their community.

Naughty: NRA Radio, for broadcasting anti-gun-control propaganda and calling it legitimate news.
Nice: Ed Schultz, Arnie Arnesen, Tony Trupiano, Thom Hartmann, Wendy Wilde, Al Franken, Katherine Lanpher and the rest of the Air America crew, for showing progressive radio can be thought-provoking, hard-hitting and fun.

Naughty: Department of Homeland Security, for omitting "major sites" like chemical plants and dams from its unfinished national database of potential terrorist targets.
Nice: Department of Homeland Security, for including "water parks and miniature golf courses" in the national database. At your local putt putt, the terrorists never win.

Naughty: The Environmental Protection Agency, for using camcorders to bribe parents into offering up their toddlers as guinea pigs for a study about the dangers of pesticides on children…sponsored by the chemical industry.
Nice: The Natural Resources Defense Council, for fighting to protect kids from the harmful effects of pesticides and chemicals. 

Naughty: Right-wing conservatives in the House of Representatives, for changing ethics rules so Tom DeLay (R-TX) could one day be their indicted leader.
Nice: Whistleblowers like Bunnatine Greenhouse, Richard Foster and Paul O'Neill, for holding our government to a higher ethical standard.

Naughty: Medicare head Tom Scully, Rep. Billy Tauzin, Rep. James Greenwood and trade representatives Ralph Ives and Claude Burcky, for using public service for personal benefit, taking lucrative, top-dollar jobs with the pharmaceutical industry they had formerly regulated.
Nice: Rep. Henry Waxman, for using public service for public benefit, compiling reports on everything from the Halliburton to undue secrecy in the White House.

Naughty: EPA administrator Mike Leavitt, for blaming pollution on poverty.
Nice: The Union of Concerned Scientists, for giving us the facts about global warming, pollution, clean energy and the Bush administration's ideological approach to science.

Naughty: Sinclair Media, for planning to run an hour long anti-Kerry screed as "news" just before the U.S. presidential election.
Nice: Media Matters and the blogosphere [and Rapid Response!], for forcing Sinclair to change its plans. (And continuing to demand that Sinclair stop broadcasting one-sided political spin.)