I suppose I should comment on the "graceful" bow out Jane Swift made from the Massachusetts GOP primary, but my sense is that it is just one more step along the road that will make 2002 stand out as the year of the bag job. To wit:

* Swifty's drop out, making room for the anointed W. Mitt Romney.
* The sale of the Red Sox to the group that MLB liked the best.
* The whole Olympic judging thing, which is more of a failed bag job than anything else. But what do you expect from the French?

I'm sure there are other bag jobs out there that I'm missing, but these are the ones that stand out. Enron would have qualified for bag job status had regulators and litigators not fallen on Kenny Lay and the boys so quickly. A quick shout out here to Arthur Andersen and their coming role in making a world where there are only the Big Four accounting firms (with a hope and a prayer that the only person I know who works for them lands on her feet).

Back to Swifty, I was surprised by the Boston Globe article that documented a very deep and bitter popular feeling against her. I am clearly not a fan of her's, and welcome a commonwealth without her in the corner office, but there is some real hate here that I can't quite understand. I see Swifty as more of someone out of her depth than anything else. I can't build up this level of disgust with her. Of course, I would have to think the Globe was more than happy to run some of the quotes.

Even though I expressed support for Robert Reich to make the Democratic primary ballot, I can't say I'm really excited by him or anyone else that's left in the race. I suppose I could vote for Warren Tolman based on the way he continued to wipe Tom Finneran's face in the whole Clean Elections financing thing (Finneran is the speaker of the state house and a vocal Clean Elections opponent). But after Tolman's butchering of the song "Soul Man" ("I'm a Tol-man!") for his lieutenant governor's bid in 1998, I may have to pass.

Not much else to report. Spring break week's been pretty quiet without the students, though the freak snowstorm on the first day of spring was something to behold. Today it's in the high 40s, and as I look out the office window it looks like most of the snow is already gone.