Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick has asked residents to observe a moment of silence at 2:50 p.m. Monday, the time the first of the two bombs exploded near the finish line. Bells will ring across the city and state after the minute-long tribute to the victims.

Many Boston residents were heading back to workplaces and schools for the first time since a dramatic week came to an even more dramatic end. Traffic was building on major arteries into the city Monday morning.

Authorities on Friday had made the unprecedented request that residents stay at home during the manhunt for suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. He was discovered that evening hiding in a boat covered by a tarp in suburban Watertown. His older brother Tamerlan was earlier killed during a furious getaway attempt.

"It's surreal," said Barbara Alton, as she walked her dog along Newbury Street. "But I feel like things are starting to get back to normal."

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“My theory is [Tamerlan Tsarnaev] was radicalized by 2009, 2010,” McCaul said. “Reports show the Russian Intelligence Service reach out to our law enforcement to interview this individual, which they did. He was on the radar, then he got off the radar. Then he travels overseas. I would assume the Russians would have some intelligence on this individual.”

Although he lacks direct evidence McCaul appeared to suggest that Tamerlan, who reportedly had a bomb strapped to his chest when he was shot, had ties to international terrorist networks. “I think another important point [is] the tools of trade craft used here,” McCaul said. “This pressure cooker device is very similar to what the Taliban in Pakistan use. The idea that they could make pipe bombs and then there are reports they had suicide vests, all point to the fact that this was…”

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Three people were killed, including an 8-year-old boy, and more than 150 injured by two explosions just seconds apart near the finish line.

Special Agent in Charge Richard DesLauriers says at a news conference there are no known additional threats.

Police commissioner Ed Davis says it is the most complex crime scene in history of the department.

Authorities are looking for amateur video and photographic evidence that can give clues to who set off the bombs.

Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley says "what occurred in Boston was an act of cowardice."

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Watch Patrick's withering response below:

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With the Senate confirming John Kerry as Secretary of State late Tuesday, Patrick is set to announce his pick in Boston today, with the appointee serving through the June 25 special election, which will fill the remaining 18 months of Kerry’s term. Because of his national reputation, Frank’s quest for the appointment has attracted considerable attention, and his central argument seems reasonable enough: Frank is legislatively savvy and has long been a champion of an expansive social safety net; with rollbacks to Medicare and Social Security potentially on the table in the coming months, Democrats could do worse than to have his experience and voice in the Senate.

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Currently, there is just one black governor, Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, and only one other – Doug Wilder in Virginia – has been elected since Reconstruction. A third, New York’s David Paterson, served an interim stint after Eliot Spitzer’s 2008 demise but declined to seek a full term. There is also just one black senator today, a Republican, Tim Scott of South Carolina.

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The longtime Massachusetts congressman, whose 32-year run in the House ended last week, declared on national television last Friday that he wants his state’s governor, Deval Patrick, to appoint him as an interim senator when John Kerry is confirmed as secretary of state. And Frank has now followed up that announcement with a series of high-profile interviews.

His pitch is sensible enough. Because the fiscal cliff deal simply deferred the debate over cuts to the social safety net and left in place several deadlines that Republicans are now claiming give them leverage, the interim senator from Massachusetts – who would serve until a special election late this spring – would be thrust into an unusually consequential debate.

“I do think, immodestly, that given the important decision that will be made about these complicated questions, in February, March and April, I’m very well-qualified,” Frank told Politico in his latest interview, “because I don’t know of anybody else who’s been doing these things so continuously who’s ready to jump in.”

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Right now, most of the speculation is focused on the Pentagon, with Obama preferring to place his longtime friend Susan Rice at State. But Republican attacks on Rice over the Benghazi episode threaten to produce a bloody confirmation battle if Obama taps her. Democrats will have 55 votes (counting Angus King and Bernie Sanders) in the Senate come January, so in theory Obama would have the numbers to win that battle. But some of those Democrats – like, for instance, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin – could face home state pressure to defect if it became a clearly partisan fight.

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This is the best part of the convention and the best part of Obama -- he's a decent and good dad, and that's a good thing.

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) September 5, 2012

Ann Romney's speech was solid but overrated, and Michelle Obama's significantly more impressive speech proves it.

— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) September 5, 2012

Michele Obama gave a very good speech. period. It was a big speech, very well done.

— Michael Steele (@Steele_Michael) September 5, 2012

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Ted Strickland, former governor of Ohio

Now, Mitt Romney, he lives by a different code. To him, American workers are just numbers on a spreadsheet.

To him, all profits are created equal, whether made on our shores or off. That's why companies Romney invested in were dubbed "outsourcing pioneers." Our nation was built by pioneers—pioneers who accepted untold risks in pursuit of freedom, not by pioneers seeking offshore profits at the expense of American workers here at home.

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Scott Brown’s triumph in Massachusetts' Jan. 19 special election, the first Republican victory in a Bay State Senate race since 1972, was the first clear, indisputable evidence how toxic the combination of soaring joblessness and total Democratic control of Washington could be for the party this year. That combination resulted in the GOP’s takeover of the House on Tuesday night, with the party gobbling up around 60 Democratic-held seats, and its significant gains in the Senate -- a pickup of six seats, it appears. Republicans also gained numerous governorships and state legislative chambers.

But, curiously enough, there’s one place where they didn’t do much winning on Tuesday night: Massachusetts.

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The logic is simple: Patrick, a trailblazing African-American politician who channeled his uplifting life story and soaring inspirational rhetoric (some of which Barack Obama borrowed in 2008) into an against-the-odds grass-roots triumph four years ago, invites easy and obvious comparisons to the current occupant of the White House. So if Patrick goes down this year (in Massachusetts, of all places), it will make for a priceless GOP talking point heading into 2012.

And, at least on paper, the task for Republicans should be just as simple. Patrick, after scoring a resounding landslide in 2006, crossed the public in the early days of his administration by giving his office a lavish redesign and (before thinking better of it) leasing a Cadillac as his official state vehicle. Fair or not, this helped erode Patrick's popularity, which never again approached the levels he enjoyed in the '06 campaign. And as the economy worsened, his numbers only ebbed further. In the most recent poll, his approval rating sits at just 40 percent.

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After all, the two men attained sudden national prominence at roughly the same time a few years ago, each sounding the same themes of hope, change and unity and each activating large grass-roots armies. Obama was only the third African-American to win a Senate seat when he was elected in 2004, while Patrick in 2006 became only the second African-American in history to win a governorship. And the political trajectory of Obama's first term as president (at least so far) matches up with Patrick's: enormous expectations and high early approval ratings that quickly gave way to popular discontent and middling poll numbers.

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And yet, Speaker Nancy Pelosi hasn't commented. Neither has Majority Leader Harry Reid. Nor have many of the members of New York's supposedly liberal congressional delegation. And those New York representatives and senators who do support the project have issued milquetoast statements through their spokespeople. Sen. Chuck Schumer's office even used the impressively obfuscating he is "'not opposed"' formulation.

Even though Rep. Jerrold Nadler, whose district includes ground zero, supports the mosque project and has criticized some of the opposition, spokesman Ilan Kayatsky told us today that the congressman is "not getting directly involved."

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The man Garrett says will get the nod from Patrick is Paul Kirk, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee who was a close friend and aide to Kennedy -- he worked for him for years, chairs the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and was the master of ceremonies at one memorial service for the senator. Kirk has gotten the endorsement of Kennedy family members, including the senator's widow, Victoria, and his two sons.

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I've been feeling the same way ever since the presidential campaign of 1984, when I wrote this for Walter Mondale: "In Reagan's America, a rising tide lifts all yachts." Mr. Mondale lost every state but Minnesota, but my line lived on. Through the years it has been stolen by the best -- Molly Ivins, Ralph Nader, Joseph Stiglitz, Warren Buffett, Doonesbury -- and always without credit.

Do I feel used? Cheated? No, I feel the same way I did in 1988 when the media went into snit mode on discovering that Joe Biden -- the horror, the horror! -- had failed to footnote a line or two he lifted from a British politician. I just feel indifferent.

The awful truth is that speechwriters have a secret, unwritten code. In obedience to it, the first thing we do on finding ourselves in the White House is to rummage through the papers of past presidents in search of things to pilfer.

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Say you didn't authorize it (or gloat) when your henchmen pulled down your elder's pants in public and tried to humiliate the Rev. Al Sharpton in the pages of the New York Post. Whatever Senator Obama thinks of a figure as controversial as Sharpton, black America must demand that he use his position to send a forceful message that neither mudslinging nor extortion will be the hallmarks of a historically disenfranchised group that has long condemned whites for their disgraceful political behavior. Just what the world needs -- more proof that power corrupts. With black support still in play among the leading Democratic contenders, rest assured they'll be watching to see how Obama responds to his supporters' attempts to marginalize (through the white media, no less) those blacks with the temerity not to worship him instantly as the anointed one.

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