First Dianne Wilkerson and her Dejavu story. Now Walker reports he - and many other people - were had by Jake Severino, a bright young Dorchester man who, it turns out, is not dying of cancer like he told Walker he was back in September.

Jake Severino had a simple explanation for why he started telling the world he was dying. "I wanted to be loved," he said. "I wanted to be loved more than I was."

Ron Wilburn, the "Cooperating Witness," talks to the Globe's Adrian Walker. Fans of Boston political intrigue need to go read the interview now, if you haven't already.

Ed. Frequent Critic of Walker Note: Adrian, this makes up for all those columns on the Red Sox and beach erosion in Winthrop.

Michael Pahre wonders why the feds waited until now to nab Wilkerson - since based on that affidavit, they had her cold last year. Are more dominoes about to fall? If so, Pahre predicts the next to go is Boston Licensing Board Chairman Daniel Pokaski - painted in a particularly unflattering way in the affidavit:

... BLB Chairman Pokaski will probably resign within weeks -- if not days -- because he stood to gain financially from the August 2007 meeting that allegedly resulted in him approving a temporary license for Dejavu while the state legislature approved a pay raise for him. ...

Meanwhile, Pahre raises an issue about the Globe: In all its wall-to-wall coverage in print today, the Globe made absolutely no mention of the role played in all this by its own Adrian Walker. Is the paper embarrassed the feds painted its columnist as a patsy used by Wilkerson to help blackmail the city council and Pokaski to get her client his liquor license?

It's not like Walker didn't want to write about the case. Yesterday, boston.com posted his musings. But after two paragraphs generically writing about his July column, Walker spent the rest of the piece sighing about what a shame Wilkerson had become. What did Wilkerson say to him to convince him to write that July column? We have no idea.

And got Adrian Walker of the Globe involved in her seamy little game. Allegedly, of course.

But Walker shouldn't feel too badly: Aside from then City Council President Maureen Feeney, pretty much everyone involved comes off as an inadvertent enabler of an unscrupulous, determined Wilkerson in the federal complaint against her.

Remember last year when the city council sought state legislation so it didn't have to hold a preliminary election to reduce the number of at-large council candidates from nine to eight?

According to the criminal complaint against her, Wilkerson threatened to hold up that legislation unless the city granted a full liquor license to a proposed restaurant on Melnea Cass Boulevard (unfortunately for Wilkerson, the guy giving her all those bribes wore a wire the whole time).

The affidavit claims that for her cash payments, Wilkerson worked it: She sent letters to all city councilors demanding a hearing on liquor licenses. She convinced Walker to write a column pushing the joint's application - by painting the holdup as proof the city licensing board had it out for non-insiders.

And, allegedly, she then threatened the city council: Get Deja Vu its full license or she'd hold up the election bill. City Council President Maureen Feeney got mad, the complaint alleges, but agreed to meet with Wilkerson.

Then Wilkerson put a hold on a second bill, which would have given raises to Licensing Board staffers. And she got Therese Murray to call Feeney to push for the license.

The Licensing Board eventually did agree to grant the license, after Wilkerson lifted her "hold" on the pay raises and agreed to sponsor legislation to get Boston more liquor licenses. And the council got its home-rule legislation to eliminate the preliminary.

They must've been eating their columnist Wheaties, because last week we didn't have a single column about state fairs in other parts of the country or boring thumbsuckers called in at the last moment. They actually worked it. Yay, Globe metro columnists!

Yesterday, we had Kevin Cullen declaring Delaware a Confederate state.

Today, Elias finds two factual errors in Adrian Walker's pointed, if schizo column on the former firefighter running for Jim Marzilli's seat (pointed because it's a poke in the eye of Boston firefighters, schizo because two-thirds of the way down, Walker tells us that voters in that district, which does not include Boston, don't care about the firefighter issue, and so he suddenly veers into education):

Honestly, does anyone fact check anything anymore at the Boston Globe?

Is there some virus going around the Globe newsroom that makes metro columnists start writing about sports? Yeah, I get it, sports is the lifeblood of this town, so, OK, write about Manny Ramirez because you can't be bothered to leave your desk to actually find something new to write about, but sheesh, at least say something original.

John Gonzalez weighs all three of the columnists and finds them wanting:

... In a city that needs bold opinions, particularly now that Bailey is gone, who among them is up to the task? Walker is inconsistent. So is Abraham, who just returned to writing this spring after spending much of her first year as a columnist on maternity leave. Cullen, meanwhile, exhausted much of his first year finding his chi. What kind of cattle prod does it take these days to make a Globe columnist earn his feed? ...

He also provides the rules for the Kevin Cullen drinking game. Yes, you get points for every Irish reference.

Not a clue why somebody would do that, but somebody did - with his column from today. Can you notice a difference?

The column itself is a plea for the legislature to pass a same-day registration bill for voters. Sounds good to me, although does anybody know what the president of the League of Women Voters was studying in grad school back in 1986? Because I'm finding it difficult to believe somebody who'd gotten to grad school would not realize that if you're registered to vote in Amherst, you can't just show up and vote in Cambridge (at least, not yet). If it's anything related to political science, or sociology or any other field that requires some working knowledge of our political system, she might want to find another example to use to push the bill.

And the question is: Does Adrian Walker's column provide any new insights into Boston Fire Department scandals?

Howie Carr does the same basic column, only better, aside from a couple of Shaughnessy-like references to events that happened 30 years ago that have absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand.