Kim Driscoll, Mayor of Salem, is using a convenient excuse -- a reception in Easthampton for the women-in-politics organization Emerge Massachusetts -- to do a little statewide meeting-and-greeting today as she continues to lay the groundwork for a possible US Senate campaign.

"The Emerge event is a natural thing I'd be doing," Driscoll said.

I'm pretty solidly on the record, particularly writing about conservatives, that I don't think we should get worked up about violent metaphors in politics -- in fact, I've written that by making too much of such things, some on the left have helped contribute to the blurring of distinctions that obscures the more dangerous political rhetoric.

About two years ago, I wrote about the new round of "state sovereignty resolutions" being pushed in state legislatures hither and yon. Most of them were literally cut-and-pastes of resolutions pushed in the early 1990s, after Bill Clinton took office. Ridiculous, but in an unimaginative way.

New Hampshire was different.

I don't know exactly what's going on here, but it sure looks like priceless Romney maneuvering.

Mitt Romney, who is typically solidly anti-union, has not been very vocal in supporting Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. Yes, he did Tweet way back on Friday: "Support @GovWalker for doing what's necessary to rein in out-of-control public sector pay and benefits," but that's about it.

Updated below

Major, long-awaited development in the same-sex marriage wars today, as the Department of Justice cuts loose from defending the Defense of Marriage Act.

From the press release:

The President has also concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, as applied to legally married same-sex couples, fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional.

It seems to me there is one interesting point in this whole government-employee union hubbub going on -- and, to give him his due, Michael Graham makes the case in his Boston Herald column today. Wade through his rhetoric about Stalin or whatever and his point is this: "Private unions don’t elect their bosses." (Of course, that won't be true once Comrade Obama fulfills his plan to seize government control of all private industry -- oops! I've said too much!)

South Dakota Senator John Thune announced today that he's opting out of the 2012 GOP Presidential sweepstakes. Thune recently rose to #4 on my rankings, thanks in large part to decreasing likelihood of others running. This is the second month in a row that one of my Top 5 dropped out, following Mike Pence in January.

I'm less surprised at Thune than I was at Pence, who I thought was better than 50% chance of running.

The Globe reports today what Scotto Brown writes in his memoir about the mysterious day back in September '09 when he showed up at a Republican State Committee meeting, where he was expected to announce his Senate candidacy, and instead this happened, as I blogged at that night:

As is being reported, the news out of that GOP meeting is that Card is 50% likelyhood of running for Senate, and Scott Brown, who previously said he's 90% likely, now says he won't run if Card runs.

This morning, the lovely town of Salem, Massachusetts announced the adoption of a new promotional tag line: "Still Making History."

Salem's mayor, Kim Driscoll, Tweeted about it this morning. Driscoll, as an aside, is much-rumored as a candidate for US Senate in 2012. And, as an aside to that aside, I have been insinuating that, given the fact that she's mayor of SALEM, it seems interesting that she has never produced PROOF that she is not actually a WITCH.

When I got word that Clif Garboden had died, I suppose it was natural that, as a writer, I immediately thought of my favorite thing he wrote during the several years I worked with him. It was a full page of band names he'd thought up. I thought it was brilliant. When I first opened to it in that issue, I read the whole thing twice through in full before ever lifting my eyes from the page.

60 Minutes has posted preview video of its profile of Sen. Scott Brown, [see below] which airs this Sunday. In it, he discusses the revelation in his forthcoming memoir that he was sexually abused as a child by a camp counselor. Powerful stuff.

Brown will also talk about physical abuse he suffered at the hands of stepfathers.

According to unofficial numbers I've been shown, Tito Jackson has won the District 7 preliminary election by a landslide -- taking over two-thirds of the vote in a six-way race.

Cornell Mills appears to have narrowly taken second place, and will face Jackson in the March 15 final. Given the margin, however, it is unlikely that Mills will be able to generate much interest in his challenge -- while I would imagine a lot of donors will suddenly want to help the apparent next city councilor as quickly as they can make out the checks.

District 7 (Roxbury) goes to the polls today, in the preliminary election to determine the two finalists to succeed Chuck Turner on the Boston City Council. More on that as the day progresses.

But meanwhile, here's a question for my Boston political nerds to chew on!

As you surely know, this is a redistricting year. I am told that this process might very well ultimately involve the redrawing of not only the nine council districts, but the city's wards and precincts -- which, as I understand it, haven't been redrawn since oh, I don't know, since they were marking the cow paths with street signs or something.

The annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has wrapped up; as usual, I stayed far away but tracked it closely. Some thoughts:

--It's important to remember that the CPAC crowd is not representative of the broader Republican base, or the conservative movement. It is primarily A) Washington-centric organizations (PACs, 401(c)3s, publishers, etc.

There's been a lot of pick-up on my item about changes in the new paperback edition of Mitt Romney's "No Apology." I didn't have room to provide more than a summary there, so I thought I'd provide more of the changes here, so people can judge for themselves.

Bear in mind that the remainder of the book (other than the new introduction) is virtually unchanged -- aside from the two sections I wrote about, I could only identify five paragraphs altered in the entire book, all of which were either to change something to past tense, or to remove something that is no longer true (eg, "there has never been an oil spill from an offshore platform").