In this week's issue of the Boston Phoenix -- in print tomorrow, online now -- I write about the anxiety permeating Beacon Hill, as Sal DiMasi makes his way to Worcester, reportedly to testify before the federal grand jury considering the probation patronage scandal.

At the close of 2010, I predicted that the probation scandal would ultimately be seen as the biggest Massachusetts political story of that year:

There's a lot of hand-wringing these days -- as there should be -- over the millions being spent in the Presidential nominating contest by so-called Super PACs, some of which are funded almost entirely by one or two very wealthy individuals.

But I would argue that, to a large extent, this phenomenon is a response to something else that's happening -- it's an attempt to fill in the gap left by the lack of money in the Presidential nominating contest.

There's an awful lot of near-apocalyptic analysis these days about Mitt Romney, who, depending upon your pundit of choice, is either A) on the verge of losing the GOP Presidential nomination to Rick Santorum; B) soon to be supplanted by a white knight savior like Jeb Bush; or C) salvaging the nomination by dooming himself in the general election.

We all know about the infamous tale of Seamus, the Romney family Irish Setter, crapping himself in a crate strapped to the top of a station wagon for 12 hours while Mitt drove the family to Canada. The story, broken in 2007 by the Boston Globe, is dogging Romney, so to speak, on the campaign trail.

In recent weeks, there's been a story going around that Seamus actually ran away on that trip, while the family was in Ontario.

It seems that a lot of Massachusetts Democrats are convinced that Senator Scotto has done serious harm to his re-election chances by co-sponsoring a bill that wildly overreacts to the recent birth-control coverage controversy. They might be right, but I'd caution that Brown is no political dummy.

He certainly remembers, for instance, that his special-election campaign got a major boost when Martha Coakley and the Massachusetts Democratic Party went after him on this same basic issue.

There was a little development in the GOP nomination process yesterday, which may end up meaning nothing but I think has the potential to spell trouble for Mitt Romney.

Texas, which is experiencing some redistricting-related difficulties, looks like it won't actually be ready to hold its primary in early April -- already a postponement from early March.

What a difference four years makes. Facing a must-win Michigan primary in 2008, Mitt Romney went all pro-worker populist; after John McCain said that some auto-industry jobs were not coming back, Romney vowed to never allow any of those jobs to be lost ever, for eternity, and hammered McCain in ads for abandoning those workers.

Bill Hudak dropped out of the Republican race to take on Congressman John Tierney last month, but he is not finished providing us entertainment with his exploits.

As has been reported elsewhere today, Hudak sent a message to his email database announcing his new cause: a multi-level marketing scheme for the miracle elixirs of a company called Qivana.

In this week's issue of the Boston Phoenix -- in print tomorrow, online now -- I look at Mitt Romney's campaign and see uncanny echoes of the one run by Charlie Baker in 2010.

We knew that Barack Obama was planning to copy from Deval Patrick's winning playbook from that gubernatorial contest. But why on earth would Romney want to crib from Baker?

Monday I suggested an analogy in which Mitt Romney is like a starting pitcher; I guess we learned yesterday (when Romney lost contests in Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado) that he really doesn't have his best stuff in this outing. I still feel pretty certain that he'll win the nomination -- he's facing a pretty weak-hitting lineup -- but he definitely needs to keep fighting for a while.

Update: Robert DeLeo's attorney, Robert Popeo, tells me today that DeLeo "is not a target of the investigation. He is not somebody who violated the law. There is nothing in the DiMasi travel that will in any way affect him.

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Word started spreading yesterday that former Massachusetts House Speaker Sal DiMasi had departed his new residence at the Federal Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky -- ie, the pen where he is serving an eight-year sentence.

I will be on Emily Rooney's WGBH radio show today at noon, doing a political week-in-review segment with the estimable Jeff Jacoby. The main topic will be Mitt Romney and the GOP nomination battle, so here's my quick take before you tune in to hear me talk about it on air.

Romney, of course, followed up his big Florida victory by winning an impressive (albeit expected) romp in Saturday's Nevada caucuses.

"ProfessorU" asks:

Any recommendcations for prof navigating the Vegas strip?

First of all, get yourself to the downtown strip for at least a few hours. That's where you want to play your table games and poker, or drink through a straw from a yard of daiquiri hanging around your neck while operating two slot machines. Or so I hear.

"RMC Strategies" asks via Twitter:

Handicap a Tim Murray v. Steve Grossman primary?

I'll assume we're talking about governor 2014, although I'd lay odds that they won't both be in that race. But let's assume that it's the two of them head-to-head. Let's also assume that nothing substantially worse comes out about Lil' Timmy's recent escapades and whatnot.