Every weekday, for the next month or two, former state Probation Department boss John O’Brien will walk into the federal courthouse in South Boston and listen as prosecutors try to send him to prison. There was a time not too long ago when it looked as if O’Brien would have the company of several Beacon Hill lawmakers at his defendant’s table. The Lowell Sun reported two years ago that the federal investigation into rigged hiring at Probation was expected to ensnare four sitting state lawmakers. Lawmaker indictments never materialized. O’Brien’s only co-defendants are a pair of former aides.

In some ways, though, prosecutors are using O’Brien’s federal corruption trial to deliver rougher treatment to Beacon Hill than they would have, had they rung up a handful of lawmakers for participating in O’Brien’s alleged jobs-for-favors trade. Instead of trying individual lawmakers, federal prosecutors are using the O’Brien trial to smear mud all over Beacon Hill’s political culture. The entire State House is on trial right now.

Sen. Mark Montigny figures prominently in the investigation into O’Brien’s tenure that outside lawyer Paul Ware prepared for the state Supreme Judicial Court. Ware’s report served as a roadmap for the case prosecutors are trying to build against O’Brien and company. Ware reported that Montigny was a prolific sponsor of candidates for patronage jobs at Probation, and that he was also one of the richest beneficiaries of political donations from Probation employees, in what Ware described as a “pay for play” culture. Montigny hasn’t been indicted in the Probation case. Instead, prosecutors have flung his dirty laundry around the courtroom, noting that Montigny secured a Probation job for his then-21-year old girlfriend. A prosecution witness testified last week that he had “grievous concerns” about O’Brien’s alleged insistence upon hiring Montigny’s girlfriend, noting that she was “woefully inadequate as far as her qualifications.”

The Globe dubbed Rep. Thomas Petrolati, a former top lieutenant to House speakers Sal DiMasi and Robert DeLeo, the king of Probation patronage four years ago. During the first week of the trial, two separate Probation Department employees testified that they made cash donations to Petrolati’s campaign account. The contributions don’t appear on the state’s campaign finance database, and they appear to run afoul of a number of state campaign rules, which prohibit cash donations over $50, require disclosure of donations above that amount, and forbid politicking while on state property. The O’Brien trial testimony has state employees bundling cash donations for Petrolati while in a state building cafeteria.

Senate President Therese Murray has come in for special scrutiny during the trial’s early days. Testimony has Murray personally pushing a patronage job for the son of a state judge; according to trial testimony, the mother of the job-seeker Murray aided, Patrick Lawton, was a friend of Murray’s. Lawton turned in a “dreadful” interview performance, but Murray and O’Brien muscled him into a job anyway; he later lost the job, after being arrested on drug charges. Murray’s office also championed the cause of another would-be Probation employee, Patricia Mosca, who told Murray’s constituent services director that she was only looking for a Probation job as a way of fattening her state pension. Instead of turning Mosca away, Murray’s office put its weight behind the pension play, and landed a job for Mosca in a Plymouth courthouse. “She’s very excited and grateful to you,” a Murray aide wrote in a memo to the Senate president. “Her interview was just OK, she knows it was because of your intervention that she was selected.”

On cross-examination the same Murray aide described how the Senate president helped engineer a court officer job for the father of Murray’s chief of staff, and secure a promotion for the sister of Norfolk County Sheriff Michael Bellotti. Documents filed by the defense also indicated that Murray’s predecessor, the lobbyist Robert Travaglini, is using Murray’s office to place patronage hires.

That’s one job for a senator’s young girlfriend, two instances of a state rep allegedly collecting cash bundled from inside the state cafeteria, and an ever-growing list of questionable patronage jobs. And the jury hasn’t even met the House speaker’s godson yet. The trial, and the ugliness for Beacon Hill, is still just getting started.

–PAUL MCMORROW

BEACON HILL

CommonWealth ‘s Jack Sullivan talks about the Probation trial on Greater Boston.

Oystergate: The amendment that would have established a “marine sanctuary” and prevented a shell fisherman from setting up a farm in Popponesset Bay did not make it into the Senate version of the budget.

MUNICIPAL MATTERS

New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell and the city’s congressman and two senators have written letters to the United States Postal Service urging the agency to reconsider its decision to close and relocate the post office in the historic downtown building where it has been for nearly a century.

Brockton Mayor William Carpenter says he will not seek to raise the property tax to the maximum allowed by law, saying the city’s commercial rate, among the highest in the state, is preventing businesses from opening in Brockton.

Quincy ‘s financial advisor praised city officials for the municipality improved bond rating but said the unfunded pension liability, which could reach $500 million, is the “elephant in the room.”

A jury largely clears the city of Cambridge in an employment discrimination lawsuit.

CASINOS

The Globe looks at Springfield‘s big bet on a downtown casino. CommonWealth dove into the Springfield casino story last spring.

Check out CommonWealth’s consolidated coverage of casinos.

NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, still in and out of the presidential race, gave a speech to a Jewish group and didn’t utter the name “Israel” once.

Oregon ‘s gay marriage ban is struck down by a federal judge, the Oregonian reports.

Jonathan Chait predicts that the political fight over climate change this summer will be worse than the fight over Obamacare.

Slate contrasts the way President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder talk about race.

BUSINESS/ECONOMY

Paul McMorrow says new thinking is needed to jumpstart development in Boston’s downtown financial district.

The Boston area housing market is booming at a frenzied pace, which suggests a bust will be coming sooner or later. Nationally, though, more than 10 million homeowners still owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, and another 10 million have so little equity that they couldn’t cover the costs of selling.

Richard Florida argues that, for all the angst over gentrification in places like Boston’s South End, the real story of urban neighborhood economies is the persistence of deep urban poverty.

Credit Suisse pleads guilty to criminal wrongdoing — one count of conspiring to aid tax evasion. The bank will pay $2.6 billion in penalties, the New York Times reports.

EDUCATION

A search panel is recommending pushing back by nearly a year the goal for having a new Boston school superintendent in place, arguing that a slowdown in the process will lead to a better pool of potential candidates.

A Marshfield man is being held on $100,000 bail after he was arrested for trying to get into the Boston University graduation while carrying two concealed semi-automatic handguns and extra fully loaded magazine clips.

A Quincy woman allegedly confessed to calling in bomb scare at Quinnipiac College in Connecticut in an attempt to cancel the graduation, so her family wouldn’t find out she wasn’t getting her degree because she didn’t attend classes.

A North Carolina law eliminating tenure for public school teachers is ruled an unconstitutional taking of the educators’ property rights by a judge, Governing reports.

HEALTH CARE

Attorney General Martha Coakley goes public with an agreement in principle that allows Partners HealthCare to go ahead with its acquisition of South Shore Hospital in Weymouth in return for a number of pricing and operating concessions, CommonWealth reports. WBUR asks if the deal goes far enough.

TRANSPORTATION

A Lynn-to-Boston commuter ferry opens for business, and the Item runs a comparison of traveling to Boston by boat, subway, and car.

The driver of an MBTA bus that crashed on Sunday has been cited for speeding, driving to endanger, and impeding operations. She also was in possession of a cell phone, a violation of T policy.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

The defense of former Probation commissioner John O’Brien and two of his top aides is becoming clear: Prove that there was no coverup of a patronage hiring scheme by showing that Robert Mulligan, the former chief judge for administration at the Trial Court, who had to approve all the hires, knew what was going on, CommonWealth reports. Meanwhile, the drumbeat of documenting patronage hires goes on, with the latest being a state employee who saw a Probation job as the answer to her pension play. Howie Carr took in yesterday’s testimony with a predictable level of glee. MassLive examines one of the key legal issues facing the O’Brien jury, the difference between patronage and bribery.

Medical marijuana users are getting arrested because of confusion over what’s legal and what isn’t, in the latest chapter of the troubled rollout of the new law.

A Sharon rabbi who abruptly resigned from his congregation earlier this month was entangled in a sordid tale in which he paid $480,000 to buy the silence of Milton man who claimed to be the brother of a 16-year-old who the rabbi had begun a sexual relationship with, according to sworn statements filed in court.

Four men are arrested and charged with disorderly conduct after staging a mock robbery at a Salisbury convenience story for a movie they were shooting. Police received a call that the store was being robbed and arrived with guns drawn, the Salem News reports.

A veteran Fall River police lieutenant with a history of being arrested quit the department after he was charged with assault on his wife and threatening her with a gun while intoxicated and out on sick leave.

An Oxford High School gym teacher is charged with aggravated rape and indecent assault of a girl under 14, NECN reports.

The former chief financial officer of St. Ann’s School, a Methuen home for troubled youth, pleads guilty to embezzling about $183,000 and will serve nine months in jail, the Eagle-Tribune reports.

MEDIA

Arthur Sulzberger Jr. sits down with Vanity Fair to talk about his firing of Jill Abramson.

Alex Jones, in a piece for Time, reminds everyone that the New York Times is essentially a family business where non-family executives are often ousted summarily. The National Review editors have little sympathy for reports that the deposed New York Times editor was paid less than her male predecessor. Ira Glass, public radio superstar, asks, “Jill who?”