Governor Deval Patrick has pushed for three casinos, but opposed slots at race tracks.

His Republican challenger, Charlie Baker, supports one casino, to test the waters.

Independent candidate Tim Cahill supports casinos and racinos.

The legislature has crafted a bill with casinos and racinos. Let's assume it passes, and Patrick vetoes it.

In the final hours, as often happens, the deals were made to reconcile the differences between the two chambers, and a whole bunch of legislation is pouring through the Massachusetts state legislature.

I haven't had a chance to find out how all those differences have been resolved in those bills, but my initial indicators are that an awful lot of them went in favor of the state senate.

Bill Hudak, Republican congressional candidate in John Tierney's district, has not always been warmly embraced by mainstream Republicans -- in fact, when Hudak announced that Scott Brown had endorsed him, Brown quickly denied it and forced a retraction.

But Charlie Baker has no problem appearing with the guy. Earlier this month, Baker accepted an invitation to speak at a large Hudak event; he came, took the stage with Hudak, and briefly addressed the audience.

Mitt Romney was once supportive of Kennedy-McCain style comprehensive immigration reform, but that was way back in 2005. By 2007, when he was running to the right of John McCain in the Republican Presidential primaries, Romney had made his opposition to reform a centerpiece of his campaign, blasting McCain over it in debates, and running harsh ads on the issue.

Word was strategically getting around earlier today that the Massachusetts House and Senate were "getting to yes," as senate president Therese Murray has put it, on the gaming bill -- to include two licenses for slots-only facilities.

That was not yet officially announced, but was pretty clearly meant to be the story for the evening news.

With the end of the 2009-'10 formal legislative session fast approaching, Beacon Hill is jammed up over the question of how to shove money into the state's four existing race tracks -- including its two dog tracks, which are in particular financial trouble. Speaker Bob DeLeo wants the state to give the tracks licenses to install slot machines; Governor Deval Patrick wants instead to dedicate a portion of casino revenues to the tracks, a position that Senate President Therese Murray agrees with, if I'm not mistaken.

In this week's issue of the Boston Phoenix -- in print tomorrow, online now -- I have a notebook-style column about the collapse of hopes for carbon-capping legislation to combat global warming. The article makes several different points and observations -- most of which involve the two US Senators from Massachusetts, John Kerry and Scott Brown.

Today Oklahoma holds its primaries, so I thought I'd take a close look at how it stacks up for my big "GOP Glass Floor" theory.

The theory -- and it's still just a theory -- is that the only women Republicans getting elected anymore are for the big, high-profile, state-wide offices of Governor and US Senator; and below that, they are growing extinct.

A new Rasmussen poll for FOX25 has the race for governor essentially unchanged since a month ago. Patrick leads Baker 38% - 32%, compared to 41%-34% in June, while Cahill ticked up from 16% to 17%, and undecided rose from 9% to 12%. (The poll doesn't include Jill Stein.)

That gibes with what I've heard about recent internal polling by a couple of the campaigns.

Watching some US Senate floor debate yesterday, I was reminded of one of my favorite things about it -- something I have had fun with in the past, but not nearly often enough: yielding for a rhetorical question.

When a Senator is speaking, another Senator may ask the speaker to yield for a question. What often happens is that a Senator on the same side in the debate -- typically the leadership representative, committee chair, or bill sponsor assigned to control debate for his or her party -- will use this parliamentary procedure to chime in with additional commentary or attack on the opposition.

In this week's issue of the Boston Phoenix -- in print and online now -- I write about two topics concerning state politics, and one concerning Mitt Romney.

In my column, I start by considering the backlog of legislation on Beacon Hill, with time ticking down to the July 31 end of the formal '09-'10 session, and wonder why there isn't a greater sense of urgency to move bills through considering how different things might be starting in 2011.

Bear with me, and I'll show you how something good is about to happen for the economy, which can be traced directly back to the rabid conservative movement -- the GOP Village of the Damned, as I called it two years ago.

It turns out that, barring further developments, the US Senate will successfully vote tomorrow to pass an amendment to a small business bill, that will in turn be passed later this week.

As you know, I love everybody.

And I usually don't like to complain about anything that causes a good political scuffle. But for cripes sakes, when you get handed a policy difference please understand that you can either have a policy debate, or you can accuse someone of corruption. When you do the latter -- when you ask the Attorney General to investigate, for example -- you kinda toss the policy debate out the window.

In this week's issue of the Boston Phoenix -- in print tomorrow, online now -- I write about the rough seas ahead for President Obama.

Just three months ago, the future looked considerably brighter for him; but now the disappointing economic recovery, the return of public attention to Afghanistan, and of course the oil spill threaten to make the coming months as problematic as the ones behind him.