So Vennochi writes an entire column on whether the state should throw another one of those no-sales-tax days and then, out of the blue, ends the thing like this:

... What's Patrick really thinking?

Maybe that his friend Barack Obama is going to be president, that he will be going with him to Washington, and that the Massachusetts budget mess will be someone else's problem.

So that's it, then, Joan? Patrick has gotten bored with state government faster than Bill Weld? Or did you just realize on deadline your column on the sales tax was a paragraph short? Or as the Outraged Liberal puts it:

There's a name for stories and columns that praise/criticize an individual for an action that requires group action, then uses the standard political rumor of the day as an explanation for said action.

It's called phoning it in.

Ryan Adams has had an interesting e-mail exchange with the Globe's Joan Vennochi about the intersection of columnists and bloggers (although I question his assertion that columnists are supposed to be unbiased, and I wonder if Vennochi assented to have her e-mail made public).

Joan Vennochi writes that Tom Reilly's rejection of Chris Gabrieli as a running mate because he wouldn't release his tax returns and his selection of Marie St. Fleur, who was a tax deadbeat, just doesn't make sense.

Where have I read that assertion before? Oh, yeah, yesterday on Blue Mass. Group.