(Cross-posted from the mighty mighty Boston Daily)

It’s budget season on Beacon Hill again. And it’s apt that it should coincide, roughly, with the run-up to area colleges’ final exams. After a semester of lying around and drinking, the legislature now has to pull a week of harried all-nighters before it can knock off work for the summer.

In broad strokes, this year’s House budget is big but not unduly wicked big, is unkind to out of state corporations, hates smokers, and offers, in Speaker Sal DiMasi’s own estimation, “nothing spectacular about any new initiative.” But you already knew that already.

So, in the interest of wrapping up the week with some semi-original reporting, here’s a few of the more interesting budget skirmishes to keep an eye on in the upcoming weeks.

First, does anybody remember how badly Gov. Deval Patrick caught hell last year for cutting Shannon grant money to pay for his 1,000 new cops campaign pledge? He couldn’t have done worse if he’d gunned down Chiara Levin himself. Luckily, the House rode to the rescue and restored the critical funds in its own budget.

So this year, Patrick, being a good governor and wanting to learn from his mistakes, not only ensured that the grants are in his budget, but he crows about “bringing funding for the program to its highest level ever.” And what does the House do? It tosses those increases in the garbage. Thanks for playing. Try again next year.

Open government advocates and reporters who like to see legislators’ fingerprints on budget amendments will have to wait ’til next year, too. The House has approved its normal measures for railroading the budget through to completion from behind closed doors. As usual, a motley coalition of Republicans and cranks tried to open budget debate procedures to sunshine, and, as usual, they were overwhelmingly defeated.

When Reps begin debating the budget next week, they won’t be doing it from the floor. Rather, when they cast votes, they’ll be voting on a raft of consolidated amendments that will be pre-screened and bundled by leadership, and that members will have had a half hour to review.

The closed-door process, Brian Wallace told us, “doesn’t shine with the lobbyists or the media,” but it keeps the bottom line from ballooning out of control.

Still, on Tuesday, Minority Leader Brad Jones warned that this year’s rules have been constructed “to take a little more power from members,” because, “You will have two days to get the budget and file amendments and Ways and Means will have nine days to figure out how to tell you ‘No.’” He also suggested that the tightly-controlled process was an effort, “to protect the members from themselves.”

The Republican leader’s criticism sparked one of the year’s most excellent floor exchanges. Angelo Scaccia, chair of the House rules committee, shot over Jones, “Mr. Speaker, that’s what the order did last year. But we have some of the most creative minds that this Commonwealth has ever seen in the Legislature.”

“So the gentleman is saying the mission of the order is to stifle creativity among the members?” Jones asked. “I’m shocked that the gentleman would want to stifle creativity.”

“Oh how he twists my words,” Scaccia replied. “Oh, what a twister. Never would I want to stifle creativity in this body. Mr. Speaker, does it say ’stupid’ across my forehead? … Maybe subterfuge is a better word than creativity.”

Later in the debate, Paul Casey landed one of the nastier (not to mention unprovoked) shots at Mayor Menino we’ve seen in a while, when he seemed to suggest that Scaccia’s desire to limit debate stemmed from his habit of breakfasting with Hizzoner:

“The gentleman would like to leave the discretion up to the leadership. What about the membership? The power of the chair, the power of the speaker is in the collective body. I understand the good gentleman from Readville understands a certain power in Boston that is unilateral. [But] we are a collective body.”

Good times.

The House also extinguished any lingering hopes that casino proponents had of sneaking expanded gambling through the back door when it barred all gaming-related amendments from the budget. So David Flynn will have to wait just a little while for that racino vote he’s been promised. It’ll be coming later. As will Christmas.

It’s been interesting to watch the official reaction from the governor’s office to the House’s proposals. Back in February, DiMasi took to Boston’s pages and scolded Patrick for finding defeat in partial legislative victories. “He needs to understand that when he wants 200 police officers and he gets 100, that’s a success,” the speaker told me. “That’s not a failure. That’s government. It’s all compromise. I didn’t get everything I wanted in the energy bill, but we accomplished a great energy bill. I worked with him on that bill for 11 months to change the things that he wanted. I didn’t go around saying, ‘How come you didn’t agree with my energy bill six months ago?’ I claimed victory, didn’t I? That’s it. That’s a learning process.”

Fast-forward a few months. The governor’s signature public safety and education initiatives have been slashed, victims of competing ambitions and austerity. Yet Patrick’s chief budget writer, Leslie Kirwan, is telling the Globe that the administration sees “a lot to like in this budget” because “They’ve adopted many of the reforms that the governor initiated.” And then House leadership turns around and thanks Patrick for his magnanimity.

Clearly, this cannot stand. WE DEMAND THAT YOU BATTLE FOR OUR AMUSEMENT. Thank you.

Finally, the Hill and the Hall would like to congratulate our governor – a man who ran against government by photo-op and press release – on surviving the hairiest photo-op of his young administration.

Dressed in a green jacket, hat, jeans and waders, Patrick ventured into the waters of Jamaica Pond, a sizable fish (described by one onlooker as “a big [f’er]”) in his arms. “Say goodbye!” he chirped, and the fish did, struggling to leap out of the governor’s clutches and, in all likelihood, devour a nearby child. It was, thankfully, unsuccessful, as Patrick applied some sort of kung-fu death grip that subdued the creature. “That’s me hugging a fish,” Patrick joked, before setting the monster loose.

City Councilor John Tobin, who was on the scene but not outfitted in traditional park ranger’s wardrobe, had this advice for any other politicians looking to dump fish into the Commonwealth’s waterways this spring: “Be prepared,” the always-dapper politician suggested. “When touching nature and stocking a pond, always come in leather dress shoes, and a suit and tie.”

Wire services contributed to this report.

Deval Patrick has got to hate St. Patrick’s week. This time a year ago, House Speaker Sal DiMasi appeared before the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and absolutely brutalized the governor – much to the delight of the assemblage of reporters and rich people in nice suits.

And now, no sooner had the vomit dried on Broadway than the speaker was back before the Chamber, telling everybody that casino gambling “will absolutely cause damage on a grand scale” and ruin lives and everything. If it’s not the end of civilization as we know it, it sounded pretty damn close.

And with that, the great casino death train of 2008 pulled back into the station. In celebration of the occasion, some people jibbered. Others jabbered. Facts, figures, reports and the like were bandied about, and somewhere along the line, the governor’s casino proposal flatlined. It was all rather dizzying, and you’ve read it all before.

So, in the interest of keeping everybody awake, this week’s Hill and the Hall will forgo any and all analysis of this week’s casino debate in favor of a recap devoted exclusively to the overblown rhetoric contained therein. It was more than just words, you know.

Gov. Patrick began the day addressing a small throng of hard-hatted laborers. We think he challenged DiMasi to a fight: “Put up! Put up … you know how the rest of that goes.”

Patrick’s pugilistic bent was no match for AFL-CIO president Bobby Haynes, though. The union head demanded that his members demand jobs or else … you know how the rest of that goes. “It’s not gonna happen because we threaten anybody,” Haynes shouted. “Don’t call them up – march into that goddamn building up there, and you get into their office! … 20,000 construction jobs is not important enough to debate? 20,000 permanent jobs are not important enough to debate? Bullshit! Bullshit!” Haynes added, rather improbably, “I will be respectful when I’m in that building.”

The best moment from the legislature’s seemingly endless casino hearing: Around 7 p.m., DiMasi moved to retreat from the surprise appearance he’d made to the marathon session’s evening edition, and was immediately ambushed by a scrum of scribes. He indulged their questions, threw a few wild elbows at his counterpart in the Corner Office (“I guess if he thinks that his bill isn’t in the best form possible, he should’ve said that a little while ago”), and then tried to back into an elevator.

The reportorial scrum followed, and the speaker was asked when the last time was that he’d spent such a long time at a hearing. “I’ve spent a lot of time in the building, as you know. So by the time you leave, I’m there at least another couple hours,” he shot back.

And with that, he was gone.

And with that, a bill the governor had staked enormous political capital (not to mention a few campaign promises) on went down to defeat. Sorry. That was almost slightly analytical. On to more tongue-wagging!

The runner-up for speechifying while killing a casino bill is Angelo Scaccia. “I want to congratulate whomever the lobbyists were on this issue,” he cracked. “I have received more information on this issue than any other issue that I have seen before 35 years in this Legislature. They have done a remarkable job and earned every single penny that folks on the outside paid them.”

Which leaves Brian Wallace, unsurprisingly, as the winner: “Some people in this House think debate is something you put on the end of a fish hook. On this Holy Thursday, let he who has filed the perfect bill cast the first stone… If God walked in right now and told us casinos would be beneficial, he would be accused of being on the payroll of Suffolk Downs… Leadership should be about protecting their membership, and not costing them their seats, and that is exactly what today’s vote is going to do.”

It may not seem like it, but there was actually more than just fighting about gambling happening on the Hill this week. The governor pulled a double-header Tuesday, following his gambling testimony with a push to get his CORI reform bill passed.

Judiciary Committee co-chair Robert Creedon introduced the governor to the committee as the “first working governor in many years,” and though Patrick delivered one of his better policy speeches in some time in defense of the bill, he would have no luck this day. “I hate to see this championed as a CORI reform bill,” Senator Dianne Wilkerson testified. “It’s the story about the pig. When you dress it up, it’s still a pig.” Luckily, the governor had already left the room.

Still, the Soaring Rhetoric of the Week Award (non-casino category) goes to Taunton Rep. James Fagan, who pushed this week for the passage of a bill lowering the legal blood alcohol limit for drunk driving from .08 to .02. It was an exhibition and a half – eight minutes of uninterrupted vitriol, during which Fagan remained standing, glancing around wildly, shouting and denouncing “the geniuses that write in the press on this.” While staring right at press row, obviously. Some of the Rep’s greatest hits:

“What we have done with that law is encourage the second type of legal gambling in Massachusetts. You can bet in the state lottery, and you can bet when you’re out as you have a second cocktail or a third, whether your breathalyzer is going to be a .07 or a .08…

“For those people that say – what about me, I go out and have one beer, I have one glass of wine? Let me tell you something – if somebody tells you they went out and had one beer, that’s somebody that has no money or no friends, or you’re lying…

“Whether it’s popular or not, I don’t care. I’m happy enough that it gains the attention it gains so that people will talk about it and think about it and be forced to confront it. And for those people in the media that say I’m a defense lawyer and I’m gonna make money off this, I had an answer for them, it was short and it was blunt and it was impolite so I’m not gonna say it again. But my opinion on them, they are the vultures that prey off the bones of these tragedies and offer no solutions of their own.”

Yes, “vultures” was his closing line. Yes, he did earn himself a round of applause.

Politics as usual: Former state senator and Human Rights Campaign president Cheryl Jacques had her surprise judicial appointment held up this week. This development was entirely unrelated to Jacques’s apparent lack of qualifications for the position.

Wire services sat through hours of testimony and contributed to this report.

Word broke early this week that Governor Deval Patrick’s casino bill was dead. House Dean David Flynn told the Taunton Gazette, “The casino bill isn’t going anywhere. I find very little support for it from members of the house,” adding that he expects a roll call vote on his racino bill, while “the casinos won’t,” because Dan Bosley’s committee “will issue an adverse report, preventing the house from voting on the casino bill.”

It’s not how things work – the Speaker’s office has repeatedly said that Patrick’s bill will receive a vote on the House floor before it wraps its budget bill in April, regardless of whether or not it gets a favorable committee report. (PS – it won’t.) But that doesn’t mean that casinos still aren’t headed for a messy demise.

Last week was not kind to Patrick’s bizarre pet cause, and this week, the bill abandoned its slow grave-ward lurch in favor of a full-on sprint. The Globe finally buried the Chamber of Commerce’s well-intentioned but ham-handed casino report, while Bosley issued a position paper that blasts yawning holes in Patrick’s economic projections. And then things got messy.

Bosley has repeatedly said that the fate of casinos, long sold as an economic development package and not a revenue-generation scheme, will rest on two questions: Where does casino revenue come from, and how much does it cost to get at it? Reps appear to be responding to those questions by rapidly coming to the conclusion that the money behind Patrick’s plan isn’t really there. Either that, or budget season’s around the corner. Whichever it is, the casino hearing the administration has demanded won’t even happen until next week, but already, the bill’s most ardent backers are declaring it all but dead.

We’ve seen a major – and stunningly quick – reversal of fortunes for a plan that, a few months ago, was building plenty of momentum, and threatening the Speaker’s hold on his own chamber. It may be that last bit – DiMasi, not Patrick, controlling the House’s fortunes – that accounts for the astounding display of rancor erupting over the past few days.

After those persistent, widespread rumors, it turns out that Senator Marian Walsh won’t be taking a job on the bench after all. All those would-be successors are, as they say, SOL.

It’s not as devastating to the collective ambitions of the state’s political establishment as John Kerry’s inexcusable failure to move his ass out of his Senate seat in 2004 was, but it’s still not good news for any pol who might think of himself as being destined for bigger and better things. (That’s no short list, either.)

Best legislative literary allusion of the week: At a Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, Senator Robert O’Leary took the microphone to testify. But first, he apologized if he looked or sounded weary. “I spent last night tilting at windmills,” he joked. Senator Robert Creedon consoled O’Leary, saying that, if he didn’t succeed in halting Cape Wind, then at least he landed himself “a nice picture in the Globe.” “Very Kennedy-esque,” Creedon nodded, admiringly.

Rookie councilor John Connolly livened up an otherwise sleepy City Council meeting on Wednesday by peppering his speech with ten-cent words like “quibble” and “quagmire.” If we didn’t know better, we’d think Connolly had already tired of the whole “public servant” gig, and was now honing his vocabulary in the hopes of becoming a sesquipedalian New York Times obit writer. Hope our normally-razor-sharp instincts are wrong on that one.

It’s time for the Hill and the Hall Rumor Control!

Item: Is the Council in for a major post-St. Paddy’s bender?

Turns out, no. Council President Maureen Feeney seemed to leave the door open to government-sanctioned revelry and debauchery when she closed this week’s meeting with a vague promise to keep the celebration rolling the next time the Council meets, “At which time I will bring you some refreshments to keep you going.” And at least one councilor was overheard asking Feeney if she was planning on distributing pints of Guinness on the Council floor. Unfortunately, Feeney was just alluding to a batch of Irish scones she’d forgotten to bring to work this week.

Wire services contributed to this report.

The most talked-about man on Beacon Hill continued to be widely talked about this week, as news that Speaker Sal DiMasi has been playing golf with a decades-old friend while not playing golf with a guy with a horrific haircut sparked an ethics uproar. It’s the surest sign yet that the state GOP has given up trying to win elections altogether, and will now focus solely on lobbing wobbly ethics complaints at its Democratic foes. And that Scot Lehigh hasn’t met a bad golf metaphor he doesn’t like.

The threat golf poses to democracy extends far beyond the current casino debate, though. Boston minorities who enjoy voting had better watch their backs: DiMasi occasionally hits the links with former Speaker Tom Finneran. Can federal voting rights violations, disgrace, and tears be far behind?

Legislators returned from their mid-winter jaunts to Orlando this week, and immediately got back to doing the people’s business. Which is to say, they threw themselves neck-deep into pervs. Pervs, pervs, pervs, pervs, pervs. A question nobody else has asked yet: Have any of these pervs ever gone golfing with Donald Trump? Somebody get Peter Torkildsen on the phone, quick!

Chuck Turner is one of the few city councilors who actually hasn’t been mentioned as a mayoral wannabe, but perhaps he should throw his hat in the race. Soaring rhetoric is king lately, and during an otherwise excruciatingly drawn out debate on whether or not to accept piles of rare public housing money from the feds, Turner uncorked what may turn out to be the non-election election year slogan of the year: “This is America. Some benefit, while others move backwards. Isn’t it time we had a policy where we all move forward?”

If David Axelrod is reading this, no, you guys can’t borrow that one, too.

Turner’s paean came after one of the young session’s most bizarrely contentious debates. He and Charles Yancey had railed against the demolition and reconstruction of Roslindale’s Washington-Beech public housing development because the new housing complex, while not built in the cheap, failed, rotting mid-century style, would push residents towards home ownership, and thus reduce the stock of public housing units, and thus totally hate on poor people. As Yancey put great wind behind this viewpoint, Council President Maureen Feeney (a self-described “project kid” who grew up in Dorchester’s Franklin Field development) shook her head and shot the Mattapan councilor one of the icier looks we’ve seen inside City Hall in a while.

How wicked excited is Mayor Menino that, thanks to councilor John Tobin, the city council will be debating term limits just as election season heats up? More than anything, the term limits proposal will be a vehicle for mayoral critics to paint Menino as this generation’s Kevin White – a tenacious mayor who remains in office, past his time, for tenacity’s sake. What remains to be seen is whether this little trick can work better than it did when Maura Hennigan pulled it three years ago.

Hey, have you heard about this casino thing? Yeah. It’s kind of a big deal. And after last week’s abrupt cancellation, the stakes for the legislature’s upcoming gambling hearing (set for a to-be-determined date in March when committee co-chairs Dan Bosley and Jack Hart can align their schedules) are growing by the day. House members are already being polled for the big vote, even though a full third of the House is said to remain undecided. Meanwhile, reports had Governor Deval Patrick also taking a number of casino-related meetings with lawmakers this week.

And while the pro-casino side has already lined up labor and municipal leaders to lobby fence-sitters, Bosley is, in some sense, expecting the hearing to give him the ammunition he needs to show his colleagues that Patrick’s rosy predictions don’t hold water.

“We’ll ask the administration what made them come to these conclusions, we’ll look at what’s happened in other states, we’ll try to collect a lot of data,” Bosley says. “We’re looking at this from an economic perspective. My two basic questions are, what does it cost to bring that money back from Connecticut, and where does that money come from?”

Bosley’s looking forward to the hearing, he says, because it’ll finally be a chance to have a “wider discussion about costs and ramifications. That hasn’t happened publicly. The public discussion has been very baseline – it’s been, ‘We’re losing money to Connecticut, and people want to gamble anyway.’”

At the same time, while the hearing should be quite constructive to anybody actually willing to sit through it – the showdown over the governor’s background research should be especially contentious – Bosley doesn’t expect many of the gambling advocates who’ll testify to stray far off message, because they’ll be playing to the press, not the committee.

“It’s not a good issue for the press,” he says, matter-of-factly. “The good issues are, there’s friction between the governor and the speaker. We’ll take testimony all day, and maybe six lines of testimony will show up the next day. The governor’s going to come down and say, ‘We’re going to have 30,000 jobs,’ and I’ll say, ‘No, you’re not.’ And we’ll go back and forth and have a wider discussion, but that’s what shows up in the paper. And the proponents know this. So they never have to go deeper.”

Wire services contributed to this report.

These are strange times for the state’s coastal legislators.

First, in November, they were subjected to an energy bill sneak attack that, unbeknownst to them, opened up their coastlines to unfettered wind farm development. They balked, as did the Senate, which had been pushing an oceans management bill authored by Senator Robert O’Leary as a way to set up a framework for plopping turbines down in the water. The senate had threatened to hold Sal DiMasi’s energy bill hostage if the House didn’t act on their oceans bill, and so, last week, House leadership pushed a gutted bizzaro version of the senate’s bill to the floor.

Turns out, it wasn’t a whole lot more than a reworded version of amendment leadership tried to cram through in November – reportedly at the behest of prospective developer Jay Cashman.

“It’s not much of an oceans bill,” O’Leary told us. “It doesn’t set up a meaningful planning process that has any teeth, and without that, it’s just an exercise, something that ends up on a shelf. I’m disappointed.”

O’Leary did pronounce himself “optimistic” that he’ll be able to bring the House around in conference committee. But until he does, don’t expect to see too much action coming out of the energy conference committee; the Senate can’t be too happy about the stunt that was just pulled on them.

The House’s coastal delegation feels even less sanguine about the whole exercise. They’d begged and pleaded to get an audience with the speaker after the energy bill fiasco. When the group finally did meet, they were told that they could expect a full debate on the turbine amendment. Instead, what they got was a chance to vote yes or no on a bid by Dartmouth Rep. John Quinn to strike the turbine language from the House version.

“The coastal reps are not happy at all,” says a House source. “There’s outrage. There was tremendous pressure brought to bear on people over this.”

“The whispers on the floor were, ‘Quinn is right, but I’m not crossing the Speaker on this one,’” another House source adds.

The wild card in all this outrage soup: With energy and oceans both in conference committee, there’s been speculation that the House could be playing ball on the Buzzard’s Bay turbines on two fields at once. We’ve also heard speculation that, if a logjam develops, the Senate might be willing to trade its more robust oceans bill for the House’s wind amendment – provided that the House takes clear ownership of the thing by reinserting it into its signature energy initiative.

Just when state government started to look like it was ready to get working, it up and quit on us. The February school vacation week brought much of the normal activity in the State House to a screeching halt. Schedules were light, meetings were canceled, reporters were bored stupid, and elected leaders were, largely, absent from Beacon Hill.

The week would’ve been a whole lot more exciting, had a casino hearing that had been scheduled for Thursday gone off as planned. It too was canceled, and rumors are that, now, we won’t see any gambling action until the latter part of next month.

The State House News Service reported that the mid-school-vacation hearing had fallen victim to the legislature’s notoriously slow, deliberative pace. Reportedly, members of the Senate – the body that actually favors Governor Deval Patrick‘s proposal – “balked at holding such a big-ticket hearing during school vacation week.”

The legislature rarely does any business during vacation weeks (many members avoid the building altogether), so the cancellation shouldn’t come as a great surprise. That hasn’t staunched the flow of conspiracy theories, though. Senator Michael Morrissey, a vocal casino proponent, told State House News that the cancellation owed less to legislators’ own penchant for relaxation than it did to anti-casino forces’ fear of the governor’s sudden, staggering succeses. “I think that was the attempt, was to undercut the support that’s been building,” he theorized. “That’s how I view it. Good deal if you can get away with it.”

In conversations in the building this week, Morrissey’s theory found more than a few believers.

“It didn’t pass the smell test,” Rep. Brian Wallace tells us about the schedule maneuvering. “I was shocked” with the hearing being scheduled for school vacation week. “A lot of people had already left. Marty Walsh was on an airplane when he found out about it. People assume there isn’t a lot that happens this week.”

Wallace, the legislature’s go-to guy for casino head-counting, pronounced the 160-member body largely up for grabs – a fact that only heightens the stakes (and the likely circus-like atmosphere) for next month’s casino hearing. It’ll likely be one and done – one hearing, an unfavorable committee report, and then a floor vote in April or May.

“The majority are undecided at this point,” Wallace says. “There are 40 on one side, 40 on the other, and a whole lot of undecideds.”

Nearly lost in the morass of midwinter vacation was new Pike director Alan LeBovidge’s hilarious, impossibly bleak, and highly quotable appearance before the authority’s board on Tuesday.

LeBovidge compared the Pike’s bureaucrats to psychologically damaged citizens living under “dictatorship” and “absolute monarchy,” and said, “When I came here, I felt like a little Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke.”

His best, and most depressing, one-liner? “Unfortunately, when I took this job, I had a sense that there was a simple solution.” Zing!

Wire services contributed to this report.

Governor Deval Patrick found out what it feels like to be governor last week, as Sal DiMasi’s House finally – finally – got to work advancing the governor’s agenda. It’s only been, what, thirteen months since the inauguration?

Patrick got to see his beloved $1 billion biotech bill emerge from committee. Here’s hoping the cost of inaction isn’t more than a billion large.

More importantly, at least politically, this week saw the speaker reverse course and fall in line with the governor’s long-stalled plan to change the state’s corporate tax code.

For the past year, Patrick’s tax plan has been panned as a burden on business and a recipe for economic disaster. Now, suddenly, the speaker is not only acceding to the governor’s plan, but using the word “reform” to refer to the new taxes. What gives?

First, the state’s business community seems to have bought into DiMasi’s own newfound logic – that taxing big out of state businesses more isn’t such a bad idea, if it can be leveraged to slash corporate tax rates and freeze unemployment payments. DiMasi’s budget outline would lower taxes from 9.5 percent to 7; Patrick’s would only see them fall to 8.3 percent. That reduction, combined with the unemployment freeze, DiMasi argued Tuesday, would mean that the “actual contribution” from all the state’s businesses would be “only $54 million” more in the short term, and revenue neutral after three years.

Asked why, if neutrality was the guiding principle that finally swung him on board, the plan couldn’t be revenue neutral right away, DiMasi sounded a lot like his counterpart in the Corner Office. He said, simply, that the state needed the money.

Which is why, ultimately, the speaker signed on to the plan at all. Two weeks ago, State House News reported, “Aides to the governor say he’s positioned strategically, and are confident they’ve got House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi boxed into a set of unappetizing policy alternatives: come up with his own revenue ideas, relent to deep cuts in popular programs, draw heavily from the stabilization account, or hop aboard Patrick’s own plans to raise money.” Cigarette tax aside, we learned Tuesday that there are no new revenue ideas, and with a massive budget deficit, something had to give. So something did.

DiMasi, notably, brushed aside a question about why he’d changed his mind on the issue. “I wouldn’t say I’ve changed my position,” he reasoned. Had he not been against closing the loopholes? Is that just us misremembering? Pressed on the matter, DiMasi told a reporter, “You must’ve been reading too much of your own news reports!”

Massive bleeding continues to afflict the state senate. In the past week, “Boston Ed” Augustus announced that he won’t be seeking reelection, and the fevered rumors surrounding Marian Walsh’s imminent judgeship reached an even greater sense of inevitability. Last week, senators Pam Resor and Robert Antonioni announced their retirement; last year, of course, saw the departure of Jarrett Barrios, Robert Havern, and President Robert Travaglini. That’s a ton of turnover for a 40-person body.

Speculation about Augustus’s seat has thus far focused on Karyn Polito and John Fresolo, though it’s the fight for Walsh’s not-open-just-yet seat that will be the real fun. There are few inside the State House who believe Majority Leader John Rogers will wind up taking a run at the seat, leaving Mike Rush the presumptive frontrunner. City Councilors John Tobin and Rob Consalvo are said to be intrigued but highly noncommittal, and with good reason. There’s likely only room for one city councilor in the race, especially with close friendships involved. And the senate seat would come at a hefty price: It would cost the upwardly-mobile pol $20,000 in pay and a shot at the mayor’s race.

The single biggest topic of conversation at the State House this week wasn’t taxes, biotech, or reps lusting after seats in the upper chamber, though. It was the governor’s “aerodynamic” new haircut. It’s cropped more closely to his head, and this fact has inspired a remarkable stream of chatter. Some of it has been positive, some not, but we’ve heard that so many people remarked upon Patrick’s cut that he took to assuming every compliment was a veiled jab. Word of this sensitivity led sympathizers to offer yet more compliments, which couldn’t have been helpful, either. The last thing he probably wanted to hear when wrapping up a press availability was a reporter eagerly yelping, “I think it’s a good haircut! Really!”

But that is, of course, exactly what he heard.

These are strange times for the state’s coastal legislators. First, they were subjected to an energy bill sneak attack that, unbeknownst to them, opened up their coastlines to unfettered wind farm development. They balked, as did the Senate, which had been pushing Senator Robert O’Leary’s oceans management bill as a way to set up a framework for plopping turbines down in the water. The senate threatened to hold Sal DiMasi’s energy bill hostage if the House didn’t act on their oceans bill, and so, this week, House leadership pushed a gutted bizzaro version of the senate’s bill to the floor. Turns out, it wasn’t a whole lot more than a reworded version of amendment leadership tried to cram through in November.

“It’s not much of an oceans bill,” O’Leary told us. “It doesn’t set up a meaningful planning process that has any teeth, and without that, it’s just an exercise, something that ends up on a shelf. I’m disappointed.”

O’Leary did pronounce himself “optimistic” that he’ll be able to bring the House around in conference committee. But until he does, don’t expect to see too much action coming out of the energy conference committee; the Senate can’t be too happy about the stunt that was just pulled on them.

But it’s not enough for Miller to just whack Sal upside the head – that act is weeks old. This late in the game, Melvin’s got to have a reason for killing Sal. Conveniently enough, Sal happens to be a filthy racist. Or so we read…

Before the English, the Africans, the French, the Germans, the Irish, the Italians and others came to these shores, there were the Native Americans. By trick and military might, the immigrants and their descendants gained control of this great nation from the Native American custodians of the land.

By treaty and federal concession, various areas across the country have been designated Indian reservations or federal trusts. These areas are then granted partial sovereignty, a status that, among other things, permits tribes to establish gambling casinos…

Some citizens seem to believe that Native Americans have no special rights that others need to respect. Salvatore F. DiMasi, the speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, seems to believe that his disdain for gambling casinos trumps the sovereign right of the Wampanoag Indians to establish one. DiMasi is wrong. This is an argument that DiMasi will lose, and his recalcitrance will cost the state millions of dollars in lost fees from casinos.

Uh, yeah. OK. Where to start? With the race-baiting or the three-car-pileup-mangled logic?

We’ll go with the latter, because it feeds into the former. The Wampanoag, by virtue of their federal recognition, do not have the sovereign right to open a casino. The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (law here, Cliffs Notes here) only allows a tribe to engage in gambling forms that are already legal in the state their reservation is sited in.

Which means that, unless the legislature votes to legalize Class III gambling, all the Wampanoag can do is open a Bingo hall. (Bingo slots, the magic loophole driving many gambling supporters at the legislature, don’t look to have the brightest future.)

What’s more, for that land in Middleborough to be worth anything, the feds would have to snap out of their sudden bent against reservation shopping.

All of that is simply to say that, no, the Wampanoag don’t have blackjack sovereignty, and no, their Middleborough casino isn’t inevitable, let alone a birthright. And to say that, just because the Speaker espouses this view, it’s tantamount to walking around the State House with smallpox-covered blankets – that’s race-baiting demagoguery in its worst form.

Mildly related: Have you seen the latest issue of CommonWealth? It’s staggeringly original and timely!

And what of the reaction from Massachusetts Democrats – people who have, more or less, spent the past six years battling Romney, cursing him, serving as the punchlines in his rightward-pandering jokes, and lobbing one nasty quote after another towards reporters? What do they say when this man fails?

Nothing.

The rules of this game are funny. When somebody’s up, it’s fine, if not expected, to throw unsparingly wicked elbows at your enemies (cf. Sal DiMasi to Romney at St. Patrick’s Day, 2006 – “You being president of the United States? That’s a joke!”) But when you spend half a decade calling somebody a fraud, and the rest of the country suddenly decides that you’re right and deals this fraud a humiliating $35 million rebuke, you don’t gloat. You don’t say anything at all.

Politics and gang life share this kind of unspoken code. You can pop off at whoever, but you don’t snitch on your own. Whatever happens, happens within and amongst your own, and it doesn’t involve outsiders. The Dems and the GOP may be rival gangs, but they’re the same breed, and when the vultures come to prey on the fallen, they close ranks protect their own; if it were them on the ground getting stomped on, they’d expect the same.

With 499 total delegates up for grabs through March 4, Romney would have to win more than 80 percent of them to catch McCain, assuming the Arizona senator won none. And, even if Huckabee won them all, he would still trail McCain. Dividing the total among the three candidates makes over taking the front-runner more difficult still.

Awww. Looks like woobums needs a hug. Or a good laugh. Hey, that Sal DiMasi’s a funny guy. He’s always good for a laugh.In fact, there was once a time way back in the spring of 2006 when Romney and DiMasi shared a great, full laugh together. What fun they had. In times like these, it’s best to go to one’s happy place – and for Mitt Romney, there can be no happier memory than the day he put on a massive show and signed the state’s landmark health care reform law. Let’s revisit that day, Mitt, and hopefully brighten your day a little bit.

Mitt was on top of the world back then. Even for a governor who ruled mostly by keeping his good angles towards the cameras, this was a coup and a half. He was taking credit for a major issue that would, hopefully, catapult him to the fore of the GOP presidential field and position him as the campaign’s most capable – and hirsute! – technocrat. Even better, he, a vile Republican, was surrounded by Massachusetts’s Democratic elite, and the way they looked at him… fawning even seems a little weak.

That photo was surely designed to outlast Romney’s term as governor, and now, it seems, it may outlive the campaign it was supposed to serve. The funny part is, even for an empty suit like Romney, this good-times photo-op was staggeringly fraudulent.

I got the real story on the famous health care photo from Sal DiMasi when I interviewed him for his feature in this month’s issue. Turns out, it was DiMasi, not Romney, driving the scene in that picture, just as it was the Speaker, not the Governor, who should’ve been claiming credit for health care reform. An excerpt from my interview with DiMasi:

The picture where we’re laughing – during the ceremony, there was a big platform that you had to stand on, and I said to myself, Holy shit, this is really orchestrated, what the hell’s going on here? This guy’s all pomp and circumstance. No substance, but that’s besides the point. I started my speech by saying – well, because he was always talking about the employer assessment as a tax, I said, think of it as a fee or an assessment. Just like you had your fees and assessments, you didn’t raise taxes, right?. I got up there and I said, Well, thank you very much, it’s always difficult going last because a lot of the time has been used up. So if I go over my time [speaking], governor, I’ll be glad to pay the $295 fee, assessment, tax, whatever you want to call it, governor.

At the end, when he goes to sign the bill, he goes, OK, where’s your $295? You went over. I went like this to pay him. [Mimes reaching into his pocket.] I said, well, I’ll pay if you tell me what it is. Is it a tax or a fee? Can I deduct this as a tax? That’s what we’re laughing at. Fee, assessment, tax, I said, whatever you want to call it.