A Thanksgiving Day good news list

For whatever reason — the expertise of our police forces, the maturity of our population or just dumb luck — crime continues to be down in Los Angeles County.

Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin of Missouri blurted out his weird belief that the female body can shut down any pregnancy that might result from "a legitimate rape." It reminded the nation of the significance of women's issues in politics.

The Los Angeles Dodgers were sold and the Frank (and Jamie) McCourt era is now part of Dodger history.

L.A. Superior Court Judge Michael Nash, presiding judge of the Juvenile Court, presumptively opened dependency hearings to allow scrutiny of the court, its officers and juvenile advocates. And that the experiment seems to be working, with no harm to juveniles.

The Legislature has finally outlawed the noxious practice of lenders foreclosing on borrowers even as they work out loan modifications that would bring the borrowers out of default.

The housing market is starting to rebound, five years after the bubble burst.

When City Atty. Carmen Trutanich broke his pledge not to seek office as district attorney, voters called him on it.

After the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors blatantly violated state law by meeting behind closed doors to discuss public safety realignment, Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley didn't let them get away with it.

Large numbers of California's parks didn't close due to budget problems, and that so many good citizens stepped forward with funding to keep them open — even if we're less than thankful that the parks system later "discovered" that it had been sitting on enough money to make many of those donations unnecessary.

The arrival of two new types of high-definition television sets — "Ultra HD" and OLED TVs — significantly raises the bar on picture quality. They're unaffordable now, but it's just a matter of time before that changes.

The California Legislature had the foresight to start setting up an insurance exchange well in advance, rather than waiting to see whether the healthcare law would survive legal and political challenges. As a result, the state's exchange will be better prepared to serve millions of individual insurance buyers than the marketplaces that many other states are now rushing to set up.

The frenetic innovation in mobile devices continues, despite the attempts by Apple and its rivals to chill the marketplace with patent lawsuits.

SOPA and PIPA, the overly broad bills sought by the entertainment industry to combat foreign websites that thrive off of copyright infringement, were defeated. The problem is real, but the proposed solutions were deeply flawed.

Finally, one set of parents — those at Desert Trails Elementary School in Adelanto — won the right to force changes at their school through the state's "parent trigger" law.

San Francisco Giants pitcher Sergio Romo made a cheerful foray into politics on the occasion of the Giants' World Series victory. At the parade for the team, Romo wore a T-shirt with the slogan "I just look illegal," reminding all of us that the immigration debate too often has descended into ethnic stereotyping.

Catholic liberals ably rebutted suggestions by the church's hierarchy that the only proper "Catholic" vote was for Republican candidates. They pointed out that, while Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan may have been closer to the bishops' position on abortion, President Obama and the Democrats were more in line with church pronouncements about the importance of healthcare and a social safety net.

Vice President Joe Biden commented on a TV talk show that he was "absolutely comfortable" with same-sex marriage. Biden's seemingly unorchestrated embrace of marriage equality pressed President Obama to complete his own "evolution" toward the same position.