Despite costing us the Super Bowl, Boston is Mayor Tom Menino's city to lose. Given relative peace and prosperity, and the incredible challenge of defeating an incumbent, Menino will likely decide when and how his tenure as mayor comes to an end. Still, a rival politician can dream. The Globe today details three people who are weighing a run for mayor in 2009: --City Councilor at Large Michael Flaherty, 38, who's been having low-key......

-Some Blotter days are longer than others … --After two teenagers were shot this morning as kids were going to school in Dorchester, police officers swarmed on the neighborhood in search of a suspect who they thought was hiding out in a triple decker on Hendry Street. Globe reporters said the BPD was at the triple decker for two hours before deciding it was empty and that the shooter took off. The victims' wounds are......

Carlo Basile, the man who was officially Democrat but fell somewhere between elephant and donkey, will be the new State Representative for East Boston. He won handily with 46% of the vote. The Hubster noted that turnout was 4,495. In the Boston City Council elections, Chuck Turner breezed to victory in District 7 (Roxbury) with 75.73% of the vote. Carlos Henriquez was second place with only 16.26% of the vote, so they will face off......

--Suffolk District Attorney Dan Conley and police commissioner Ed Davis were able to be in the same room this weekend despite their ongoing public spat. But someone has BPD detectives have been distributing flyers around Government Center denouncing Conley's actions. The flyer pulls no punches and even likens Conley to a feudal lord: "Dan Conley is a politician who only wants to flex his political might over the serfs beneath him." Can everyone involved in......

--In Framingham on Tuesday night, a robber used Devil Dogs as part of his strategy when stealing from the Stop & Shop. Emanuel Goffigan got into line and "began waving" a pack of Devil Dogs. Then, when the cashier opened the drawer of her cash machine, he pounced on it, got the money, and ran. We're not exactly sure where the Devil Dogs fit because he could have jumped on the drawer at any time,......

The state supreme court ruled against the Herald Monday, upholding a $2 million verdict saying that the paper is guilty of libel against a Superior Court judge. Reporter David Wedge accused Judge Ernest Murphy of saying a 14-year-old rape victim should "get over it" in 2002. Murphy declared that he said no such thing and said the statement destroyed his reputation, so he sued. A jury found Wedge guilty in 2005, and the Herald appealed.......

--Machetes are definitely hot in East Boston. The BPD saw a guy just a-walking around at night with a two-foot-long machete "protruding from his waist area." Could he have been using it to accessorize his belt? Luckily, they arrested him before he got to use it on anyone. We imagine no one wanted to bother him except for a few brave police officers. --A cold case is warming up in New Bedford. Nine women were......

Early yesterday morning, the BPD was summoned to the Mansion Night Club for a disturbance. Two men from Billerica were involved in a brawl, and one of the men must have decided he really wanted to go to jail because he took a bite out of an officer's thigh. There's no indication on the BPD blog of how large the bite was or whether or not the officer had to go to the hospital for......

After little Sheldon Mathias got hit by a bullet on I-93 Wednesday night, people might be worried that tough guys are firing at random people. But the Suffolk District Attorney thinks the shooters were aiming at someone in the car – even if they weren't smart enough to shoot straight. Even if someone in the car was involved in some kind of beef, poor Sheldon shouldn't have been involved. This incident, if anything should push......

The spring semester is just underway. The student population has brought back an influx of students into Boston and across the Commonwealth. But a student, Brian Marquis, at UMass Amherst won't let the fall semester go. He's holding on and disputing a grade he received. He's exchanged the emails with the TA, talked to various higher-ups in the department, and taken it to the next step. He's filed grievance in the courts – fifteen counts......

Leave it to the F.B.I. to finally nab the real criminals in the United States today…the guys who stole the Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt baby shower photos! Despite the country being plagued with terror threats and now a new bin Laden tape, the F.B.I. was able to track down these photo thieves right here to Westfield, Massachusetts on Tuesday night. It seems that camera shop employees, Bill Keyes and Adam Beckwith, had come across......

Back in December the Boston Herald ran a front page story that two had been arrested in the Dorchester quadruple murder case. The Boston Police Department was quick to rebut the claims by the Herald, but after the announcements this weekend we're wondering if their tipster was credible after all. Calvin Carnes Jr. and Robert Turner, both 19, have been arrested and arraigned on charges relating to the murders on December 13, 2005. Each of......

The Stem Cell debate has come to the Hub. As expected Senator Ted Kennedy is butting heads with Governor Mitt Romney. The Governor opposes the expanded use of embryonic stem cells in research for moral reasons. His claim that you must create life and then discard it, this, he claims, would put us closer to "barbarism." Kennedy is working at the federal level with a bill that would lift the ban on funding for the......