Cheers and jeers from around the news (now a regular feature):

• Cheers for Ruth Marden, town manager in Jay, for instituting a stringent new e-mail policy for selectmen. She’s trying to protect town officials from misusing e-mail, and any embarrassing revelations under Right-To-Know.

Marden, though, may be taking matters too far. She told selectmen recently, and rather ominously, “If I send you an e-mail, the press has a right to ask to see your e-mails on your personal computers.”

This is true – but also obvious. As town manager, all her official e-mails are public. For selectmen, however, only those e-mails pertaining to town business are open under the Freedom of Access Act.

Private e-mails, or computer files, are exempt from FOAA. Because a selectman uses a personal computer or e-mail address for town affairs doesn’t open the computer contents entirely to public scrutiny. Privacy is maintained.

Marden realizes, as all public officials should, that e-mail is easily misused. She deserves credit for being proactive with Jay selectmen with this policy. But it’s worth mentioning that FOAA is not a reason to stop using e-mail.

It’s a reason to use e-mail right.

• Jeers for news that a repeal of school district consolidation may have enough signatures to appear on the 2009 ballot. This is the last thing Maine needs.

By the time this question appears, most school districts will have spent more than two years talking, planning and creating new regional school units. The process has been trying, but the ends are worthwhile.

A repeal could undo all of this work, unnecessarily. Consolidation is controversial and has annoyed many people. That murmurs of discontent still circulate is unsurprising. But it needs a chance to work.

Critics of consolidation should lend their energy toward fixing the system, instead of tearing it apart.

• Jeers for the extinction of family pharmacies in Maine. The latest to announce closures are Ketner’s in Norway and Howard’s Rexall in Farmington.

For decades, the family pharmacy was a community staple, and the pharmacists who staffed them were known by all, because everybody – at one point or another – needed their services. Those days are gone.

Small pharmacies have been able to compete on price, but this advantage has winnowed against the buying power of big retailers. That the owners of Ketner’s and Howard’s will now work for large drugstore chains is telling.

There are certain things that, when gone, aren’t coming back. The family pharmacy is one.

• And speaking of things not coming back, jeers for Tom Brady’s season-ending injury.

After a no-show during the pre-season, the New England Patriots’ quarterback lasted only 16 plays until his knee, and an entire region’s Super Bowl hopes, buckled.

Now Matt Cassel, a lifelong backup, has the reins, starting tomorrow. So, cheers for him.

(He’s going to need them.)