In this week’s edition of the Sunday Seven, I asked you to name seven stories that resonated with you in 2007.

Here are the stories that struck me as notable:

7. John McCain Tours Iraq to prove how safe its streets are.

The presidential campaign had already been underway, but I think this was one of the moments that would launch the lunacy that was to come.

McCain made his own story one step sillier when he criticized the media for not giving the American people the “whole story” about how good things were getting in Iraq. Unfortunately for Mr. Tell-It-Like-It-Is, I (and others) pointed out what he was probably hoping his followers wouldn’t know:

While it’s true that McCain was able to walk the streets of Iraq as he never has before, the marketplace he visited was located within the city’s “green zone,” a heavily-secured area. When outside of that zone, he was accompanied by about 100 armed soldiers, about 20 of whom went with him inside the safe portion of the city. McCain was outfitted in what appeared to be a bulletproof vest, and was being protected from the sky by three Blackhawk helicopters and two Apache gunships.

With a bulletproof vest, 20 armed escorts, gunships and helicopters, I’d probably feel pretty safe walking the streets of an already heavily protected area, too.

6. Democrats Take Over Congress

The much-ballyhooed take over of Congress by Democrats for the first time in a dozen years promised to be the start of repairs to our country’s image in the rest of the world, the rightings of legions of wrongs committed by the “Bush Empire,” the hope of the working man, the cure for cancer, and just about every end to every other bit of badness you can think of.

With that kind of expectation (that they had the misfortune of helping build on their own), some level of disappointment was to be … uh … expected. But you can’t escape the feeling that they just didn’t do nearly enough of the things they were so sure they would.

We’re still pretty much where we were with the notable exception that now people are more quick to express their dissatisfaction with the president and Congress.

This “great hope of Democracy” would get another black eye late in the year when it was learned that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats were briefed back in 2002 on “waterboarding,” a torture method that was part of the plan in the War on Terror, and apparently not only failed to raise objections, but asked if it was strong enough as a way to get information out of potential bad guys.

A rights violation is a rights violation, regardless of what side of the political spectrum you’re on, and regardless of how many days after 9/11 you learn of it: if it was so wrong now, it was so wrong then.

5. Barker Retires from The Price is Right

Lest someone ask, yes, I do realize that in the grand scheme of things, the changing of the guard at a game show should rank right up there with the importance of the debate about how much settling is acceptable during shipment for a bag of Doritos.

On the other hand, it was my favorite show (and some other people’s, too), a show I (and some others) grew up with, and a day that I (and some others) hoped we’d never see: daytime dynamo Bob Barker, the silver-haired host dubbed the “World’s Greatest Master of Ceremonies” by the late Mark Goodson, hanging up that trademark skinny microphone for the last time.

The announcement of his retirement came around Halloween of 2006. His final show aired on June 15th, and his replacement, Drew Carey, didn’t make his debut until the middle of October, following a ridiculously-long search for a replacement.

Some argued that Barker was “forced” to retire because he was old. While it’s true that 83-year-olds aren’t exactly spring chickens, the idea that it would take so long to find a successor to the CBS Daytime throne suggests that CBS (and ‘TPIR’ owner Fremantle) had no real exit strategy.

Where have I heard that phrase before?

4. Students Killed in Beach House Fire

A monumental tragedy that elicited both genuine sadness at the loss of seven South Carolina college students (six from USC, one from Clemson) and feigned shock at rumors that some of the students who had spent the evening in the beach house — all of whom were under the legal drinking age — had been drinking.

College kids, lest anyone else out there missed a memo somewhere along the way, drink. Excessively. Unbelievably. Insatiably. And before one hangover is gone, they’re already working on the next one.

True, not all of them do. But it’s generally a safe bet that when you gather a group of college teens into a beach house with no adults over the age of 30 or so around, someone’s going to find a way to get alcohol.

Clemson University said it was going to review its “alcohol policy.” If its policy is anything other than “people under the legal age to drink shouldn’t,” then I’d say the review is worthwhile; it’s just a shame that it took this kind of tragedy to make that happen.

3. Williams-Brice Stadium Fills Up For Obama Rally

A little backstory here: my first “officially” published rant was in the form of a Letter to the Editor of The State newspaper back in 1986 or so. It was for a high school English class. We were instructed to pick a topic and argue a valid point. I chose the Confederate Flag that at the time was flying atop the Statehouse dome. I argued that while I had no objections to the flag being displayed within the context of a Confederate Memorial of some kind, I felt that it had no business flying on the dome because it no longer represented a shred of valid government in session below the dome itself. (Yes, a white guy in South Carolina actually wanted the flag to come down.)

Unfortunately, it would take about another 14 years of bickering, maneuvering and pointless posturing before it actually would be lowered for the last time, (and don’t get me started about that “compromise” business).

Fast-forward seven years, to 2007, when a planned event for a black presidential candidate to be introduced by a black entertainment icon had so many requests for tickets that it had to move to the 80,000+ capacity Williams-Brice Stadium.

Whether anyone in attendance actually votes for Barack Obama or not, for a brief moment they listened to what a black man had to say about how he’d actually run the nation. Just barely into the 21st century, South Carolina seemed to have finally inched its way towards new possibilities.

2. Massacre at Virginia Tech

Much like my pick for the number one story of the year, this one began quietly, with reports of a “possible casualty.” Over the next few hours, it would go from rumors that one person may have been wounded, to a painful reality that 33 were gunned down in the nation’s worst mass shooting in history.

The release of a videotape and written tirade by the gunman would send the blogosphere into a frenzy of debate. And a poem read at a memorial service captured a campus’s spirit that you had to admire.

1. Nine Charleston Firefighters Killed in Furniture Store Fire

It was the biggest loss of firefighters since 9/11, and I found myself on the scene. I had done a bit of shopping at Charleston’s Citadel Mall, which is one major street over from the location of the Sofa Super Store. As I was walking to my car, I noticed a thick column of black smoke. It looked like the kind of smoke one sees when a junkyard burns tires. So for a few seconds, I dismissed it. But as I took a few more steps towards my car, I realized two important points: first, the column of smoke was far too big for something like that, and second, there was no junkyard and no other practical location where such a fire should be burning in that particular area.

I made my way to the scene, saw a massive fire shooting out of the back of the store’s warehouse, and called the newsroom over at Channel 37. They already had one crew on the scene, I was assured, and others were on the way.

Part of my responsibilities there include helping supervise the station’s website. Oddly enough, I officially took on those added responsibilities on that very day, June 18th. (How’s that for timing?)

So I made my way back to the station, logged in and started writing. At first, it seemed clear that there were going to be no injuries…just an incredible blaze, the kind of breaking story that produces footage that a television station will use in promos for years to come.

Television, after all, is a visual medium. Anything that shows a news story actually happening —versus seeing a reporter standing at the scene of a story that already happened but where nothing is happening at that moment — better suits the needs of the medium. Just as the sound of something happening is more compelling to a radio listener than a reporter’s description of what was heard previously. It’s just the way it works.

But as I was getting ready to turn updates over to the capable assignment desk, we heard something over the scanner that changed everything: there was a firefighter who was unaccounted for. As the evening wore on, the number increased until it reached 11, then dropped back to nine. And there, sadly, it stayed.

Thousands of people, including firefighters from across the country, showed up for the emotional nonuple funeral, during which Fire Chief Rusty Thomas told personal stories about each one. It was a day when the cliché, “There wasn’t a dry eye in the house” clearly applied.

These were my picks for the year. If you want to play along, there’s always time.