The sentencing memorandum filed by Boston federal prosecutors last week, seeking between 33 and 41 months incarceration for convicted former Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner, is no ordinary document. (Today, Judge Douglas Woodlock imposed a sentence of 36 months.)

From the first line, the memorandum reads like the coked-up rant of a paranoid regime, infuriated that any of its subjects would dare speak against it.

Two days ago, as every resident of Massachusetts was daydreaming of what to do if he or she won the Mega Millions (I too was guilty of that), Governor Deval Patrick held an intense marathon of media availability. He gave 15-minute interviews to 19 reporters from all over Mass., including two from Hispanic media outlets, three Brazilians, and one Haitian.

Here's a campaign shocker: RACHEL MADDOW is still not running for Scott Brown's seat. Apparently that full page Globe ad last year wasn't enough for the Huffington Post, the Boston Herald, and eight zillion blogs. It wasn't really true until she showed up at Harvard on Sunday night and made an offhanded comment about it.

By now, pretty much everyone has heard of slash, right? After all, fanfiction about two allegedly straight fictional characters (or celebrity personae) falling in sweaty, homoerotic love is something everyone can enjoy.

And what better grist for the genre than the heated, contentious world of politics? Besides, ever since the Tea Party started cockblocking the midterm elections with their weird, boring antics, the spark is gone; the current races just aren’t making our hearts go pitter-pat they way they usually do.

Is there any scenario in which a co-sign from a former President can do more to hurt a candidate than help? Unless his last name happens to rhyme with ‘mush', the answer would seemingly be no. And if that former Commander in Chief even goes as far as coming out to show support at a rally in your backyard? You'd really have to go above and beyond the call of ineptitude to fuck that up.

Subcultures spawn defining rituals: fans of Insane Clown Posse have the Gathering of the Juggalos; practitioners of radical self-realization congregate at Burning Man; and for the national journo-politico elite and its legion of camp followers there are the publication of Bob Woodward's inside-the-Beltway, memo-and-tell, docudramas.

Meet Basil Marceaux, Tennessee gubernatorial candidate and proud graduate of the Tom Menino School of Public Speaking.

In one of those quietly terrifying page-one stories in the March 3 New York Times, we learn that G.W. Bush's crack legal team advised him, after 9/11, that, among other unheard-of things, he could use the US military to conduct warrantless domestic searches in the name of fighting terrorists. (See Memos Reveal Scope of Power Bush Sought in Fighting Terror

Why didn't American journalists think of this sooner?

• Bush: "I don't know what the guy said, but I saw his sole"
• Modesto Bee: "I couldn't believe he had time to get a second one off."
• Politico: Bush ducks shoe, but female press secretary gets whacked in face with microphone during ensuing melee

I called Sonia Chang-Diaz’s Campaign Manager Deborah Shah yesterday to ask if her soldiers were pulling a traditional java-driven all-nighter before today’s primary, in which her candidate is challenging State Senator Dianne Wilkerson for her Second Suffolk Senate District seat. My plan was to surprise them at 4am, when volunteers and even candidates tend to say the darndest things.

"The local grassroots movement, helmed by 'Wayne Pickering,' is proposing an ordinance initiative for the November 2008 San Francisco ballot in order to get the poop/pee/vomit plant's title changed.

First she tried to market the image of herself as a fearless first-lady-caught-in the-line-of fire with her exaggerated claims of narrowly missing sniper fire while on a visit to Bosnia in 1996, but now she’s trying to dupe the public into thinking she possesses the same die-hard, give-it-your-all, not-going-down-without-a-fight personality as…Rocky Balboa? In her most recent public appearance, Senator Clinton compared herself to the legendary Sylvester Stallone character in a speech given to the AFL-CIO in Philadelphia today