Cheers and jeers from around the news:

• Jeers to political signs that remain by our roadsides. (Where are the thieving vandals now? They’re needed.)

Win or lose, the right thing for campaigns or candidates to do is to fetch their regalia and restore the scenery. Before the election, the signs were political messages deserving of the highest protection under the First Amendment.

Today, they’re litter. Get out and pick them up.

• Jeers to the U.S. airline industry. There were days, not long ago, when flying had panache. Now, it’s just a pain. From fees for checked baggage to a la carte everything once in flight, the flying experience has declined. Even programming costs money. Two dollars per show on some flights.

There’s better entertainment in the SkyMall catalog.

And some airlines, after asking $1 for coffee, have the temerity to have flight attendants hawk credit card applications during the flight. That should solve all their problems.

• Cheers to Sen. Olympia Snowe. Her assessment of the relationship of Afghanistan and Pakistan, after a recent visit to the region, is worth trumpeting. Without an alliance between the countries toward controlling their borders, American troops and our national security will remain in danger and in question, respectively.

President-elect Barack Obama has talked eloquently about making a secure Afghanistan a focus of his administration. Snowe was optimistic that with emphasis, bringing the region under control – and local control – is possible.

It’s just one of America’s myriad foreign policy challenges. Snowe deserves credit for investigating it.

• Jeers to the stalemate between Time Warner Cable and the NFL Network.

On Thursday, this battle of wills kept many Maine viewers from watching the battle of the New England Patriots vs. the New York Jets. In their quarrel, the only losers were fans who expect to see their teams.

The business model of cable television – expensive, top heavy program packages, little customer choice and town-by-town contracting – seems ripe for evolution.

Situations like this highlight the powerlessness of cable customers. Eventually, this frustration will boil into how consumers choose their entertainment provider. Evolution can either come or be forced.

It’s up to cable companies and networks to decide how.

• And cheers and jeers to Real ID. As of Monday, anybody in Maine wishing a driver’s license needs to show proof of residency and citizenship. It will be a hassle – no doubt. All this documentation is bound to cause headaches at local registries, and certainly longer lines.

But the tradeoff is greater security of Maine licenses, lax oversight of which had caused them to be black-market commodities, especially for out-of-state entrepreneurs trying to procure identity cards for undocumented aliens.

The question is whether one is worth the other.

Real ID remains a flawed concept which should not be passed onto states as an unfunded mandate. Its future under the Obama administration will be interesting to watch.