The front of Sunday's New York Times will evidently be blessed with "Death Penalty Leaves Boston Unsure of Itself." The paper found the death sentence handed down to convicted Boston Marathon terrorist bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev a distasteful "blot" on Boston's compassionate liberal reputation, which has rendered the finish line "a place of ambivalence," with no end of self-righteous Bostonian handwringing on the matter.

The Boston Herald reports that “Teamsters Local 25 — the crew that drives for most TV and movie productions made in Massachusetts — reportedly harassed and threatened” the cast and crew of Bravo’s “Top Chef” when they taped their latest season in the area and used non-union drivers. Unions rarely make national news, and this will probably be no exception. What about "Entertainment Tonight" or "Access Hollywood"?

When comely “Top Chef” host Padma Lakshmi arrived on the set, picketers called her a “(expletive) whore,” a Herald source confirmed, and threatened to “bash that pretty face in.” Deadline.com said there was more than that:

It may be that we can finally identify the type of criminal conviction which might cause the New England conference of the National Associations for the Advancement of Colored People to call for the removal of a state legislator.

Based on a conversation Boston Herald columnist and radio talk host Michael Graham had with the group's president, it appears that some form of felony conviction might do the trick. By contrast, a misdemeanor — apparently regardless of the nature of that misdemeanor — would not. The "if a Republican said something similar, all hell would break loose" observation will become obvious once readers see what former Massachusetts State Rep. Carlos Henriquez stands convicted of doing (HT to James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web; bolds are mine throughout this post):

On May 4, the town of Beverly, Massachusetts threw a huge parade and concert for 19-year-old “American Idol” contestant Angie Miller, who made the top three in the competition.“It’s a great chance to show off our fair city,” Mayor Bill Scanlon said. The city spent $31,200 on security, cleanup and other costs associated with the events, he said.

So it must have looked like an odd contrast in American values when the town of Beverly, Massachusetts then canceled its parade for Memorial Day 23 days later, a tradition for more than 100 years. Thousands turned out for the pop star, but few turn out for the heroic fallen:     

The Boston Herald has broken the story -- a scoop even the Boston Globe has acknowledged -- that "Tamerlan Tsarnaev was living on taxpayer-funded state welfare benefits even as he was delving deep into the world of radical anti-American Islamism."

A responsible national establishment press would treat this as an important story, because, as the Herald's Chris Cassidy noted in the understatement of the day, it "raises questions over whether Tsarnaev financed his radicalization on taxpayer money." Several paragraphs from the Herald story, followed by a look at how Todd Wallack and Beth Healy at the Globe handled their story on the family's finances, follow the jump.