Mike Barnicle
Mike Barnicle

Rebellion has its roots in government's indifference and incompetence.

Mike Barnicle
Mike Barnicle

We live in a culture where everyone's opinion, view, and assessment of situations and people spill across social media, a lot of it anonymously, much of it shaped by mindless meanness and ignorance.

Mike Barnicle
Mike Barnicle

Sixteen times a year, all thirty-two NFL teams give us what we're looking for: speed, skill, violence, fantasy league orgasms and a final score. No confusion. No doubt. No indecision. A winner and a loser.

Mike Barnicle
Mike Barnicle

It's your glove, your baseball glove. It's got a soul, a memory all its own, and a future that never fades because it has never let go of the grasp the past has on you and so many others.

Mike Barnicle
Mike Barnicle

Charleston, South Carolina, is about a 90-minute drive northwest of Beaufort and Parris Island. It is an old city reborn with new charm and an influx of snowbirds from the North attracted by its ease, comfort and accessibility.

Mike Barnicle
Mike Barnicle

For millions on the outside looking in, this is where they want to live - America.

Mike Barnicle
Mike Barnicle

Sadly, it seems as if there is no longer any real history. Just momentary reactions to events that disappear like sky-writing with items like Twitter, texts, Meerkat, Snapchat, and Instagram.

Mike Barnicle
Mike Barnicle

We have more tools at hand, literally, to make life easier and more productive than ever. We have Google, Wikipedia, iPads, iPhones, iTunes, YouTube, Netflix, and 600 cable channels. We can shop, pay bills, order food, and get nearly everything delivered, all of it with the touch of a finger on a device in the palm of our hand.

Mike Barnicle
Mike Barnicle

If you want proof of what the country is really all about, just walk through the National September 11 Memorial Museum. Here it is, in the faces of the victims, in the stories of bravery, in the souls and memory of the survivors, the next of kin.

Mike Barnicle
Mike Barnicle

Cardinal Raymond Burke is a 66-year-old guy who lives in Rome, dresses like Queen Elizabeth, and talks like someone who majored in misogyny at some bogus, backwoods, Bible-banging tent school.

Mike Barnicle
Mike Barnicle

During the course of any normal day, I usually pay more attention to assembling a grocery list than I do to reading movie reviews, although there are a more than a few film critics who bring huge insight to their work.

Mike Barnicle
Mike Barnicle

You used to be able to identify Sox fans in Yankee Stadium. They sat, slump-shouldered, with the same panicked expectation nervous motorists have looking in the rearview mirror at the 16-wheeler behind them on Interstate 95 near New Haven.

Mike Barnicle
Mike Barnicle

The refurbishing and rebuilding of Fenway Park since 2001 has created a new urban neighborhood in Boston.

Mike Barnicle
Mike Barnicle

What is forgiveness? An emotion? A coping mechanism? An element of deepest faith? A way for the heart and soul to combat the type of hate, anger, rage and a thirst for revenge that could ultimately consume a person? All of those and more?

Mike Barnicle
Mike Barnicle

Fear is hugely contagious. Used skillfully by politicians looking to manipulate voters, it can become toxic and capable of infecting more than just a few.

Mike Barnicle
Mike Barnicle

America provided things that form the foundation of who we used to be: the prospect and potential of hope, mercy, and freedom for strangers who came carrying not much more than a determination to survive in a big country with a bigger heart.

Mike Barnicle
Mike Barnicle

Cops, more than firefighters, EMTs or other public safety employees, almost always get the first glance of the human condition at the worst, most lethal moments; nobody calls a cop with good news.

Mike Barnicle
Mike Barnicle

Baseball is a movable conversation across nine innings. It is eye contact with the person seated next to you in a park where the pitcher is separated from the batter by 60 feet, six inches or in a family room where a 60-inch TV screen hangs on the wall.

Mike Barnicle
Mike Barnicle

Cops can deprive people of their freedom. They are sworn to serve and protect. They work for us and they belong to, basically, a service industry, laboring in conditions that are sometimes threatening, often dangerous yet interesting.

Mike Barnicle
Mike Barnicle

Clearly, the Iranians are well aware that Teheran would be turned into a field of glass and sand if they ever stepped toward open war with Israel or Saudi Arabia.