At this point, it seems, absolutely no one is disputing that Scott Brown was, at first, totally cool with being sworn in to the US Senate on February 11. So what changed?

The letter sent yesterday by Dan Winslow, Brown's attorney, says Brown decided to hustle after learning about "a number of votes scheduled prior to that date."

Yesterday, the Herald's Howie Carr suggested that the Boston Globe had described Scott Brown's 1.1 million supporters as "thugs" and machete-wielding "goons." Now--after trying and failing to figure out the source of Carr's gripe--I have an explanation from Carr himself:

Alex Beam column referred to goons, postings on message board upped the ante to thugs, then thugs with machetes.

In today's Herald, Howie Carr calls for Scott Brown to be seated immediately in the US Senate--and accuses the Boston Globe of smearing Brown and the people who elected him:

It’s so heartwarming, to pick up the moonbats’ favorite broadsheet and see yourself - and 1.1 million other Brown voters - described as “thugs” and “goons.

Suppose you're still weighing who to vote for in next week's Democratic US Senate primary--and then you read this, courtesy of the Globe's Alex Beam:

Martha Coakley is a very good-looking woman, and by far the handsomest candidate among the four Democrats running for Ted Kennedy's seat.

Call it the babe factor.

In this week's Phoenix, I size up the ongoing feud between Herald columnist Howie Carr and "Ernie Boch, III," his mysterious Blue Mass. Group-based tormentor. (Note: EB3, as he's frequently called, is no relation to car magnate Ernie Boch, Jr.) In the process, I argue that Carr doesn't really seem to understand his nemesis--and that, despite some strong ideological and biographical differences between the two, there are some noteworthy similarities as well.

Until today, I thought Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize was just a gratuitous European swipe at the Bush Administration.

But now I know better, thanks to Herald columnist Howie Carr, who today identifies the Nobel as the race-based handout it really is:

Barack is a guy who was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.

That group includes 14-24 year olds who "lack basic skills"; are parents or are about to become parents; have dropped out of school; are homeless; didn't grow up speaking English; didn't grow up in this country; or have run away from home.

Oh yeah--youth with legal problems fit the bill, too.

Howie Carr actually doesn't seem to mind the fact that the program panned on the Herald's front page--a federally funded program for kids of families currently linked to the Department of Transitional Assistance--helps low-income people.

Quick: guess which Boston paper is marking Barack Obama's win with a 32-page glossy publication, titled "Boston Celebrates Barack Obama: Reflections on a man, his life and our times," on sale tomorrow for just $2.99?

No, it's not the Boston Globe. It is, instead, the Boston Herald--which, in endorsing McCain last October, suggested that it would be a bad idea to put a "naif in the Oval Office."