Adam Reilly reports that Eileen McNamara is taking a buyout and leaving the Globe April 1; will teach fulltime at Brandeis.

I admit it: I was dubious about Eileen McNamara's first New Bedford column, in which she said state officials failed the immigrants, because her assertion those officials knew about the raid ahead of time was based on word from a federal flack, and how could we trust that?

McNamara fills in the gaps today, and proves that not only did state officials know about the raid weeks ahead of time, Harry Spence and the governor who kept him on as DSS commissioner really should just learn to shut up rather than get caught up in a Big Lie:

... Told that, in fact, members of Patrick's Cabinet had briefed him about the operation weeks ago and that Spence had participated in a conference call with ICE the day before the raid -- a fact the commissioner himself acknowledged in yesterday's newspapers -- [a Patrick flack] reconsidered: "I'd like to retract that statement until I talk to someone who actually knows something about this timeline." ...

On Blue Mass. Group, Charley on the MTA declares victory in his site's seemingly unending war with WGBH's "Greater Boston" over John Carroll's inability to detect sarcasm - apparently Carroll rolled on his back last night and showed his throat to the bloggers, so Charley gave him an affectionate nip and now all is well in the pack again.

But Dan Kennedy, a panelist on the show (also: a blogger), says Charley misquoted him.

The Blogger/MSM conflict is even breaking up families.

Meanwhile, the Globe's Mac Daniel decides he's a computer expert and tells "this guy" who reported problems using the T's now retracted Web site with Opera to grow up or something:

Our suggestion? Stop using Opera.

That guy, Spatch, fires back:

... Wow! Awesome! Thanks for that helpful nugget of advice there, chief! That kind of knee-jerk bullshit response is about as annoying as the zealots on certain tech boards who answer every question about a Windows problem with "INSTALL LINUX, PROBLEM SOLVED." Basically it means "I have nothing helpful to contribute, but I just thought I'd act like a douchebag anyway." ...

And then there's the whole Eileen McNamara/Scott Allen Miller controversy, with McNamara playing the MSM know-it-all and Miller, nominally also part of the MSM, playing blogger in the sense that he fired back on his blog.

McNamara called Miller a media mouth making fun of an effort to combat teen suicide in Needham. Referring to the Needham High School principal, she ended her column:

Why pillory someone trying to find such a delicate balance? Paul Richards goes to the funerals; the media mouths do not.

Pity McNamara never contacted Miller, because she might have learned that he lives in Needham and attended services for two suicide victims. Plus, he writes he never actually said what McNamara quoted him as saying - she got her quotes from a summary on WRKO's Web site, written by the show producer.

He wants an apology. The Herald's Messenger blog says he can forget about that - the Globe says that even if that's true, McNamara still got the gist of what he said right.

Oh, come on, Kennedy, in his blogger role, writes. If the Globe can apologize for implying that tin cans are made of tin, the least it can do is clarify what Miller actually said, Kennedy says.

Eileen McNamara looks at the mess that is the Big Dig and sees a world in which we rush to the phones to demand our legislators invest heavily in mass transit.

Sco looks at the mess that is the Big Dig and reads McNamara's column and sees a world in which we rush to defeat any legislator who would dare suggest another major public-works project in Boston:

... People are angry, and angry people don't want to put even more money into a new project that could end up causing just as many problems as the CA/Tastrophe. McNamara forgets that residents of the state that do not have to commute into Boston (yes, there are such people) are not going to want to have anything to do with another expensive public works project for a long time. I, for one, would rather sit in my car than give Beacon Hill hacks another opportunity to line their pockets until they can prove to me that they've cleaned up their act. ...

Jason, however, agrees with McNamara and says the real problem is Republican control of the executive and suburban control of the legislature:

... Why does the suburban and rural portion of the Commonwealth have such an apparent disproportionate influence on urban Boston. Is it me or is there some odd undercurrent of bizarre conservative provincialism in Massachusetts? So much for the "Hub". It seems that we are beyond debating the necessity of public transit and the Big Dig. Both are failing, there should be accountability, but the people in the Commonwealth should move forward together to repair and fix both and stop the grumbling.

Mats Tolander explains why:

I dislike her coulmns because they rarely make much sense, and her work today is a good example.

Back when I was interviewing for my first full-time journalism job (at ye olde Middlesex News in Framingham), they sat me down at a desk, gave me a typed list of facts about an incident in random order and gave me 15 minutes to turn the facts into a story.

Let's pretend we have two candidates for metro columnist at the Boston Globe. Here are some of the facts: Days of torrential rains lead to worst flooding in 70 years on the North Shore. Hundreds are evacuated. State officials rush to the scene and offer immediate aid.

Now we set them loose. They have 15 minutes to write a column.

One turns in a series of one-liners about how wet the rain is making Boston and how it's terrible to see women all bundled up and how, gosh, the rain is just awful.

The other thinks for a minute, then writes a thoughtful essay asking why state officials are so quick to pledge millions in aid to people along the Merrimack yet are quiet when it comes to daily, bloody violence in Boston:

... Romney and Senator John F. Kerry went to the Merrimack Valley to promise relief for waterlogged basements. They did not come to Dorchester to commit themselves to reducing the number of Boston's grief-stricken mothers. ...

Which one would you hire?

John Daley was suprised to read that Eileen McNamara can't figure out Mitt Romney and Kerry Healey's possible motives for opposing the Cape Wind project given that they live so far from Nantucket Sound:

... Their motive? Duh! How about money? Money equals contributions, equals votes, equals winning an election. You don't have to live on the coast to want to be on good terms with the rich folks who do. An experienced observer like McNamara doesn't get this? I had to read the column several times, just to make sure it wasn't all tongue-in-cheek.

Don't worry - I haven't taken a penny from Cape Wind opponents.

In the Globe, Eileen McNamara writes that sometimes police are too quick to name suspects. Noting that Imette St. Guillen grew up in Mission Hill, the neighborhood turned upside down in the Charles Stuart case, she writes:

... If Littlejohn is guilty, evidence will tie him to the crime. But am I the only one in Boston who gets shivers reading that detectives are going door to door interrogating every young black man in Littlejohn's Queens neighborhood who might have been an accomplice? ...

John Daley, who works for the Boston police, agrees premature release of investigative information is a problem. But he says the press must share the blame:

... What about the tremendous pressure that crime reporters receive from their editors to get something, anything, on a big crime story? Is that a factor? How about the reporters who cultivate disgruntled and often out-of-touch anonymous sources within the police department, manipulating them with fluff to get them to talk about things that they only know second or third hand? ...

But could somebody get Eileen McNamara to pile up about 500 copies of her column today and use them to slap Brian McGrory about the head to show him what a metro columnist at New England's largest newspaper should be writing about instead of sucking his thumb over Theo Epstein?

Johnny agrees and says firing would be too good for McGrory.

My standard newspaper disclosure.