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.

Rhode Island's dominant daily is out to get the governor because he is partially of Italian ancestry. So says one of the people who called to speak with Dan Yorke this afternoon as he discussed the media-governor conflict with Steve Kass. (The caller noted how the ProJo has previously gone after people named Celona and Bevilacqua, although he didn't say anything about some Patriarca guy.

In a nod to critics of the ProJo's notorious interpreter editorial, the paper offers this follow-up editorial today:

Governor Carcieri has explained that he did not mean to include court interpreters in his recent radio comments denouncing taxpayer-funded interpreters for immigrants, the subject of the Oct.

The weekly Political Roundtable on WRNI (1290 AM) can now be found online, and Scott MacKay, a veteran political reporter at the ProJo, used the occasion last week to share some thoughts on the ongoing conflict between the Journal and the administration of Governor Carcieri.

MacKay noted that the ProJo has endorsed Carcieri during each of his gubernatorial runs.

While the governor might be reluctant to criticize the Providence Journal, the editorial board at the daily has no such compunctions when it comes to Carcieri.

Although today's lead editorial -- headlined, "New launch for Carcieri?" -- doesn't appear to yet be online, it offers some very sharp advice to the second-term gov:

Making a return engagement to WPRI/WNAC-TV's Newsmakers, Governor Carcieri this morning downplayed his administration's frustration with how it is being covered in the Providence Journal. His only concern comes, Carcieri says, when the paper gets its facts wrong, as the governor says it did with this editorial on Wednesday.

The Providene Journal's estimable Kathy Gregg had a great story yesterday about the Carcieri administration's growing use of temporary staffers. One suspects that if legislative Democrats offered as few answers on this, the governor would be all over them.

Still, isn't it kind of fascinating that the ProJo's editorial board has been ahead of its reporters in taking Carcieri to task?

UPDATE: One of my astute media colleagues has come up with an even-better dark horse: John Celona, who has a little more than a week of freedom left before he is scheduled to be imprisoned.

One of the great Rhode Island events of the year is prevented, by statute, from taking place in Rhode Island. We speak of the Providence Newspaper Guild's annual Follies, which happens on the last Friday in February (in other words, two days from now) at the inimitable Venus de Milo in Swansea, Massachusetts.

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.