Richard Palmer, Flemming Norcott,
Joette Katz and Lubbie Harper, Jr.

Making love legal: In the heady days of a presidential election and ballot drives to deny gay couples the rights afforded to straight ones, four Connecticut Supreme Court justices took a stand against discrimination. Justices Richard Palmer, Flemming Norcott, Joette Katz and Lubbie Harper, Jr. authored a landmark decision that legalized same-sex marriage in Connecticut, making us only the third state to do so. The majority's decision went way beyond the usual legalese: It was a full-on recognition of changing societal norms and the need to adapt the law to fit contemporary definitions of love and equality. Meanwhile, the downfall of society hasn't been spotted in Connecticut since.

Sheldon Toubman

Health care crusadin': Sheldon Toubman is a bulldog dressed up as a lawyer for the poor. In a sea of health care advocates pushing solutions to Connecticut's health care crisis (an estimated 300,000 lack insurance), Toubman stands out as one of the toughest and smartest. He's been a stalwart advocate for families on HUSKY health care, the state's Medicaid program, by writing letters, testifying to lawmakers and providing cut-rate legal help to low-income families trapped in the HMO maze.

Toubman was instrumental in putting the brakes on the state's hastily rolled-out Charter Oak Health Care plan, fighting tooth and nail with the Rell administration to ensure poor families weren't forced into new HMOs until there are enough doctors to care for them. His status as muckraker was codified when Gov. Rell demanded letters and e-mails from critics of her plan, specifically ones to and from Sheldon Toubman.

Roger Reynolds and Terry Backer

Sound protectors: Lots of environmental groups have the law behind them. Not as many have lawyers, which makes Connecticut Fund for the Environment and its Save the Sound program unique among the state's eco-watchdogs. When CFE threatens to sue, you better believe they can — and will — if they have to. Roger Reynolds (left) did just that (threatened to sue under the Clean Water Act) to force owners of the Millstone nuclear power plant in Waterford to agree to a timeline for upgrading their reactor cooling system, which kills billions of fish and fish eggs when sucking water from Long Island Sound. Reynolds, a senior attorney with CFE, and Soundkeeper's Terry Backer (right) brokered a deal with Millstone owner Dominion last September that will eventually end a decade of delay and likely force Millstone to install a more eco-friendly cooling system.

Jason Braff

First amendment kid: Student journalists at Quinnipiac University got a chilling lesson in free speech this year: speak out against school administration and face the heavy hand of Soviet-style censorship. The backstory: A student was the victim of a racist slur on the first day of school, 2007. Quinnpiac Chronicle Editor Jason Braff got the scoop and wanted to publish online. School brass said no — Braff had to wait three weeks until the print version came out. That launched a dust-up that led to the university de-funding the paper and imposing tighter editorial controls. So Braff took his staff and started the independent campus news site QuadNews.net with a few laptops and $1,000 donated by family and friends. You'd think Quinnipiac, a university that prides itself as a training ground for tomorrow's reporters, would embrace enterprising young news hounds. But school administrators went after Quad News with Orwellian zeal, even banning the student chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for lending Quad News a campus activity room for its news meeting. Horns for Q-Pac. Halos for Braff and his staff.

Yale Law School Students

Bush busters: Vetting George W. Bush's claims about imminent terror attacks and secret national security campaigns ain't easy. You'd have to be a lawyer to navigate the maze of statutes that let the government keep some documents secret and not others. Or a human rights–inclined law student. Student lawyers at Yale Law School, including Sameer Ahmed and Bram Elias (pictured), cracked Bush's wall of secrecy this year by way of a lawsuit that exposed an immigration campaign as a fishing expedition that rounded up mostly innocent Muslim men. The Bush administration said Operation Front Line was launched in 2004 to disrupt a terror plot set to happen near election day or inauguration day. Maybe it was. But the 300 case files reviewed by the Yale team (randomly selected by the feds) turned up not a single arrest on terror charges. The lawyers fought federal stonewalling for years to get those documents and are still in court battling to get what's left. No wonder Bush and Co. wanted to keep it under wraps.

Oh give me a home loan: Sen. Chris Dodd never stood a chance at the Democratic nomination, much less the presidency. But that didn't stop the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee from fleeing Washington during the prelude to the biggest banking collapse of our lifetime and moving his family to Iowa for the caucuses. Once Dodd did finally come to earth (and back to D.C.), we learned he'd received special low-interest mortgage deals from Countrywide Financial, a company that made huge profits off predatory subprime loans and which his committee was supposed to regulate. Dodd first said he'd make public the details of the loan, then backpedaled and stonewalled reporters seeking answers. Dodd's up for re-election in 2010 and his approval rating's sunk below 50 percent. After a year like this, he might find winning another term a rocky ride.

Tribune Company

Bankrupt and blue: We all wanted to believe. Sam Zell, the foul-mouthed CEO of Tribune Co. (which owns the Hartford Courant and this paper), told employees last January he wouldn't "cut to success." In other words, not balancing the books by firing reporters and editors, cutting down on local coverage and giving readers even fewer reasons to buy your rag (or in our case, pick it up for free). Then the other shoe dropped. Tribune, saddled by billions in debt and an exodus of advertising, started cutting like Jack the Ripper. The Courant lost 25 percent of its newsroom in a single buyout and redesigned the paper with less news and less investigative reporting to try to cover up the changes. Tribune filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month to buy time and hold off its lenders. Let's hope Chapter 12 holds some good news.

Joe Lieberman

Free to be GOP: 2008 was the year Sen. Joe Lieberman came out of the Republican closet. He completed his transformation from Democrat in Name Only to Pretty Much The Total Republican We Always Knew He Was. He endorsed the Republican candidate for president. He sung the praises of his severely under-qualified running mate. He pedaled bogus innuendo about Barack Obama being a Marxist and winning the endorsement of the terrorist organization Hamas. He delivered a keynote speech at the Republican National Convention. And when it was all over, he came crawling back to the candidate he'd trashed with full-throated praise and was rewarded with chairmanship of the powerful Homeland Security committee. If Joe Lieberman were a toddler, he'd have flung his dinner plate right into his parents' faces, only to have them say, "Kids do the darndest things."

Sam Caligiuri

Three strikes, now you're out!: First he asked the legislature to make it law. They refused. Then he told voters they could pass it through ballot initiative by amending the state constitution. They declined. Then he demanded lawmakers up for re-election sign a pledge in support of it. A majority of those who did were defeated. State Sen. Sam Caligiuri's quest for a "three strikes and you're out law" (which mandates life in prison for a third violent offense) has met with rejection every step of the way even after deploying the most potent spokesman into the political arena: Dr. William Petit, the man whose wife and daughters were brutally murdered in the infamous 2007 Cheshire murders. Petit has scrupulously avoided using his personal tragedy to push a political agenda and we can only assume he was a willing spokesman for Caligiuri's cause. But the three strikes pledge was doomed to fail and it's hard to imagine Caligiuri, whose district includes Cheshire, didn't know that. Besides, the law wouldn't have applied to the Cheshire killers because it was their first violent offense. Is that strike four?

Michael Jarjura

Spending your money, keeping you in the dark: Most politicians wouldn't touch John Rowland with a 10-foot pole for fear they'd catch the ex-governor's corruption cooties. Waterbury Mayor Michael Jarjura's not most politicians. Not only did Jarjura give the felonious Rowland another chance by hiring him to be Waterbury's economic development pitch man, not only did he use taxpayer money to fund part of Rowland's $95,000-per-year salary, but he did it in a way that ensures the details of Rowland's work are shielded from public scrutiny. Jarjura and Stephen R. Sasala II, president of the Waterbury Regional Chamber of Commerce, arranged to have Waterbury tax dollars pay 80 percent of Rowland's salary and have the chamber pick up the rest. They made Rowland an employee of the chamber, not the city, which exempts his contract and all other records pertaining to his work from disclosure under open records law. For all we know, Rowland could be kicking back in a hot tub, having a good laugh about it.

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