We've got a pretty good sense, now, for what the pension bill will look like when it comes up for a vote. And most observers expect it to pass. So how did the key players fare in Smith Hill's battle royale? An initial look:

• Gina Raimondo seems a clear winner, here. This bill was her baby. She got loads of local and national press for it.

ProJo columnist Bob Kerr writes in his column today on the Daniel Gordon drama:

...we really do have to ask ourselves how a guy who did really bad stuff and spent time in jail managed to get elected without anyone taking a hard look at a very ugly history.

It is a good question. But I'd ask another. Two actually: who, exactly, should have unearthed Gordon's history? And who should be tasked with the responsibility of vetting candidates going forward?

Providence Journal sources say reporter Phil Marcelo, who covers the city of Providence, will fill the vacancy in the paper's three-member State House bureau.

The slot has been open since former ProJo scribe Steve Peoples left the paper to join Washington-based political publication Roll Call in July.

The bureau, one of the most demanding outposts at the paper, has traditionally been a site of rapid turnover.

There, at the end of the Projo's piece on House Speaker William J. Murphy's decision to step down from his post after 2010 and endorse Majority leader Gordon Fox as his successor, is this note:

Murphy commented after a report about his Capriccio dinner announcement surfaced on the RIFuture.org blog.

It was a small acknowledgment of a new reality.

As I've written before, I think the ProJo's Ed Achorn writes a very good column. While N4N might not agree with everything he says, his writing is clean and elegant, imbued with a knowledge of history (and a love of baseball), and his weekly Tuesday piece is generally pointed and provocative -- qualities that are highly desirable in opinion writing.

Brown University's Darrell West and Lisa Pelosi, a former communications director for Linc Almond, joined Jim Taricani and Bill Rappleye during the 10 News Conference broadcast yesterday. Naturally, some of the conversation turned to the question of, as Rappleye put it, whether the Providence Journal is "against" Governor Carcieri.

News-hungry wretch that I am, N4N ventured out to the local Cumby's yesterday to secure a Providence Sunday Journal after experiencing the problems described in the previous post. It was a good thing that I did, for the ProJo ran off its second consecutive strong Sunday paper in two weeks.

For my money, the best and most enterprising piece was Karen Lee Ziner's tough story about the troubled history of "Carmelo Kercado, the federal government's inspector at the New Bedford factory that was raided last month .

N4N tends to agree with those who say the 2003 Station fire disaster caused an overreaction in new laws and regulation. Representatives Joseph Trillo (R-Warwick) and Peter Ginaitt (D-Warwick) discuss this topic during an appearance Sunday on Newsmakers, broadcast at 5:30 AM on Channel 12 and at 10 AM on Fox 64. Also, Providence City Councilman Miguel Luna appears on the show to discuss immigration and his proposal for making Providence a sanctuary city.

Not for Nothing, but second terms commonly prove more problematic for chief executives than the first time around the block.

I might have overstated things a bit when I wrote in December about the post-election outlook facing Governor Carcieri. Yet despite the governor's continued upbeat tone, it doesn't bode well when his ideological supporters on the fourth floor of Fountain Street sternly take him to task today, with a stinging double-hit.