Cleaning out the inbox ...

Cheers and jeers from around the news:

• Jeers to the Air National Guard, for doing a shoddy job with their official "Environmental Impact Statement" of low-level military flights across Western Maine. The governor and residents had requested a six- to nine-month delay for a better study, but the Guard pressed forward instead.

A public hearing is today in the student center at the University of Maine at Farmington, from 2 to 6 p.m., about the flights. This meeting is being held too soon, because the Guard's work is still too thin.

The report prepared by the Guard for the flights remains unchanged, even though it lacks an author and cites, among its sources, the easily alterable Wikipedia. These flaws would draw disdain from a teacher about a student's report; the Guard can do better.

It should take the time to do better. Low-level flights have already flunked once in Maine; the Guard must provide better support for its position or risk having it happen again.

• Cheers to "Got your bags, Maine," a new program to be unveiled Monday to encourage consumers to use reusable bags for shopping. The idea came about after the legislative failure of a bill from Sen. John Nutting to enact a tax on plastic shopping bags.

"Got your bags" is better.

There's no question that reusable bags, if adopted wholesale, are better for retailers, consumers and the environment. The only question is changing consumer habits; "Got your bags" has its work ahead in this regard, but given the broad benefits of reusable bags, the campaign should have great success.

• Jeers to citizens of Roxbury, for presenting a petition to town selectmen to overturn something that never existed.

This week, a petition to Roxbury leaders was delivered to overturn a Shoreland Zoning Ordinance that was enacted on June 15. That would be fine, except voters actually enacted a Floodplain Management Ordinance. They are entirely different things.

The rub is that the petition circulators had since June to realize their mistake. And selectmen, though the petition is clearly inaccurate, must go through the machinations of acceptance and legal review — plus, perhaps, even hold a meeting and vote.

This seems like too much work for a failed concept. The town shouldn't bother and, instead, tell petitioners to try again next time.

• Jeers to Maine's inane law on wine and beer tastings. The law was conceived to prevent families from experiencing slightly drunken revelers at tastings in semi-public settings. It was enacted to prohibit children from being exposed to tastings in any setting, even just by passing by a picture window.

Establishments that wish to hold tastings must now blacken their windows and barricade their doors as if martial law has been declared, lest a child peek. No wonder some vendors have called the law ludicrous. (It is.) The Legislature will consider revamping this bad law this coming session.

We have only one thing to say about this effort.

Cheers.

editorialboard@sunjournal.com