Hello. I’m back from vacation and ready for an exciting week of politics.

First, thanks to everyone for their comments on Kevin Wack’s three-part series, “Danger behind the wheel: Suspended drivers in Maine.” The response so far has been overwhelming. Kevin’s working on some follow-up stories that you should see in the paper in the next week or so.

Now it’s time to talk about the Maine caucuses. Maine’s Republicans will hold their caucuses Wednesday through Sunday, although most will happen on Saturday. Democrats will caucus on Sunday, Feb. 10.

We’ll have stories starting Thursday and we expect a story on Maine’s GOP winner for Sunday’s paper, as well as similar coverage for the Dems the following weekend. We also ran a comprehensive story on both parties' caucuses in last Sunday's newspaper.

As I write this, the battles for both the Republican and Democratic nominations remain a toss up between John McCain and Mitt Romney on the GOP side, and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Dems. But so far it’s been hard to get a read on the significance of Maine’s caucuses.

On one hand, we hear from political experts who tell us that they won’t have much impact on the national battles for the nomination because most of the delegates and attention are in the larger states, or in the 24 states holding primaries or caucuses next Tuesday, the so-called “Super Tuesday.”

Meanwhile, other experts think Maine could become a factor, particularly if both nominations are still wide open, which could then translate into greater national media attention and candidate visits.

So far it’s anybody’s guess. GOP contender Ron Paul visited the state yesterday, but as of right now, none of the other candidates are scheduled to come here. We’ll keep you posted if that changes.

For the better part of a year, our investigative reporter, Kevin Wack, has been working on a story about people who drive with suspended licenses in Maine.

Along the way Kevin battled state officials over access to public information; crunched thousands and thousands of numbers; visited jails; rode with police officers; conducted hundreds of interviews on the phone and in person; written and rewritten countless drafts; and dealt with cranky editors.

On Sunday, the world gets to see the fruits of his labor. That’s when the first part of Kevin’s three-part series – “Danger behind the wheel: Suspended drivers on Maine roads” – will be published. Parts 2 and 3 will follow on Monday and Tuesday, respectively.

In addition to Kevin’s stories, there are some fantastic web-only videos, slide shows and graphics produced by online producer Suzi Piker, photographer Gregory Rec and graphic artist Jeff Woodbury.

So what does the series say? You’ll have to read it. I’m not giving it away.

It’s not easy to do investigative journalism. The work is complicated. The hours are endless. The process of writing, editing, rewriting and re-editing stories can be frustrating. We take it seriously and we’re proud of our newspaper’s commitment to this vital work.

I just wanted to say thanks to all the readers who took time to e-mail us their ice storm stories.

We got dozens of submissions. We edited many of them down to include in Sunday’s newspaper. The rest we posted here in their entirety.

Be sure to give them a read. The stories are great.