They proved the other night that they can sit together nicely for a couple of hours

Now comes the real test for members of Congress.

Can they also work together?

More particularly, can our lawmakers suppress their ideological differences long enough to devise legislative compromises that benefit the nation, even at the risk of a painful blow to their partisan credentials?

Who knows?

We don’t.

Oregon’s public records law has long seemed to us to have a curious lack of emphasis on the rights of the public.

We say curious because, after all, the public — which is to say, all of us — is mentioned pretty frequently in the law. We’re right there in the title, even.

The concept of the law is admirable — that each of us is entitled to look at and listen to and basically to scrutinize, to whatever degree we please, the records that our public agencies produce.

These are, after all, public records. We paid for them, they were produced ostensibly on our behalf, hence we own them.

Republicans in the Oregon Legislature are feeling frisky.

Which is no surprise, considering the gains the GOP made at the state Capitol in the November election.

GOP candidates took six seats in the House to even the slate at 30 Democrats, 30 Republicans.

And Republicans gained two seats in the Senate, although the Democrats still hold a 16-14 majority there.

Among the more interesting of the proposals put forward by the newly empowered GOP leadership in Salem is a call to ban state agencies from enacting new rules for two years.

(Although the Legislature makes laws, state agency officials often pass administrative rules needed to carry out those laws.)

The business district along 10th Street in Baker City has fared better than commercial zones in some other cities where, as happened here, a new freeway bypassed what was the main drag through town.

Despite having most through traffic shunted onto Interstate 84, and the development of the typical retail strip next to the freeway (East Campbell Street), the 10th Street business district has retained much of the flavor that it had when the interstate was built 40 years ago.

Get enough members of Congress together and you can actually accomplish something.

Oregon’s delegation, along with representatives from several other states, proved that last week when the Environmental Protection Agency reversed its puzzlingly stubborn course on how to regulate the fledgling industry that burns logging slash and other biomass to produce heat and electricity.

The concept epitomized by the phrase “words have consequences” has gotten a lot of play in the media since six people were murdered and 14 others, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, were hurt in a shooting spree in Tucson, Ariz., on Jan. 8.

Sadly, as is typical with such simplifications, relatively few commentators seem inclined to soberly evaluate whether the “words have consequences” charge, whatever its validity in general, contains even a scrap of relevance to the Tucson tragedy.

We say no, it doesn’t.

Like the vast majority of Americans we have an instinctive disgust for the crime of child pornography.

And so we reacted with suspicion when we read this month that the Oregon Supreme Court had overturned two child porn convictions.

“Wonderful,” we initially thought, “a couple of creeps got off through some technicality.”

We were wrong.

The state Supreme Court got it right.

The plea for kindness and collaboration among Baker City Council members was perhaps predictable.

The desire for political congeniality, expressed by Councilor Beverly Calder and Mayor Dennis Dorrah on Tuesday during the Council’s first meeting of 2011, is one typically put forth at the beginning of a year.

And although like many resolutions this one sometimes dissipates before the first crocus has cleaved the hard old snow, we think there’s rather more reason than usual to be optimistic that this City Council will pull off the feat.

On the roster of pollution problems, baling twine ranks well below, say, carbon dioxide emissions and radon.

Still and all, there’s a bunch of twine in places such as Baker County, where the stuff is to farmers and ranchers what duct tape is to many city dwellers.

Until recently, though, there was no easy way for local residents to responsibly get rid of strands of twine that were no longer useful.

Some landowners resorted to burning piles of twine. This is not only bad for the environment — burning plastic twine produces noxious and toxic smoke — but it’s potentially bad for the owner’s bank account. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality could fine you $10,000 for burning plastic.

We don’t as a rule recommend Baker City emulate Portland.

But we’d be pleased to ride the big city’s coattails on the matter of cryptosporidium.