Red Sox Nation, it’s time we have a talk. This isn’t going to be easy, because I come to you not as one of your own, but as The Enemy: a Yankees fan, a loyal subject of the “Evil Empire.” But see, that’s part of the problem. I’m not The Enemy. I’m just a baseball fan. It’s only when you insist on viewing baseball as a cataclysmic battle between two diametrically opposed forces that I become “The Enemy.” And that, my Dustin Pedroia-loving friends is precisely the point. (For the record, I quite like Dustin Pedroia and have nothing but respect for him. Ditto for former closer Jonathan Papelbon, Trot Nixon, Gator and any number of Red Sox gamers throughout the years. That being said, Youk is kind of a douche.) A lot of you take this just a bit too seriously. It’s time to grow up and learn to enjoy baseball for the game that it is.

As I write this, your beloved Sawks are dead last in the AL East, having just been thumped 18-3 by the Texas Rangers – and at home, no less. Boston’s 4-7 start, following on the heels of last September’s epic collapse, has again turned Red Sox Nation into a circular firing squad. There’s so much finger pointing, gnashing of teeth and throwing of tantrums that the casual observer could be forgiven for thinking something important was actually at stake. The airwaves of WEEI are brimming over with hysterical emotion as caller after caller throws in his two cents worth of outrage and armchair coaching. Doomsday has been predicted, the honor and integrity of the ownership have been questioned, and first-year manager Bobby Valentine has been called a “cockaroach” (sic). It’s only April.

Part of the problem is that Red Sox Nation spent generations as a downtrodden baseball backwater, a land of disappointment, broken dreams and epic collapses where defeat was constantly being snatched from the jaws of victory. Those days are over, but …More

On the 24th of this month, Rhode Island Republicans go to the polls for primary day. In a long and often surprising election season, one thing we can count on is that the Rhode Island votes won’t matter. This is not a knock on the party, but a simple statement of fact. Romney will likely take the primary in a walk, Obama is a lock to win our deep blue state in the general, and no candidate much cares about our paltry delegate count anyway. So go ahead and vote your conscience, Republicans, because it’s pretty much all you’ve got.

This election, like all, will illustrate so much of what’s wrong with our democratic process: the pandering hysteria of campaign rhetoric, the divisiveness of wedge issues and party politics, the corrupting influence of money, the apathy of voters. The general election will bring the usual cries about the need for campaign finance reform and the abolishment of the electoral college, but let’s not overlook what the primaries teach us about the corruption, perversion, inefficiency and futility of our electoral process.

As I write this, Mitt Romney has just handily won the Illinois primary. While the overwhelming odds still point to him earning the nomination, the how and when of that are increasingly hard to answer. Challengers Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich recognize that they can’t overtake the former governor in the delegate count, and instead are campaigning to deny him the 1144 votes needed to secure victory, forcing a brokered convention. This long, slow, often surprising battle for the soul of the Republican Party has become the story of the 2012 election thus far, but it has unfortunately eclipsed the lesson to be learned about the innate ridiculousness of this entire process.

The march to the nomination is an unnecessarily complex and convoluted obstacle course of primaries, caucuses, delegate apportionments, media markets, election laws, balloting, political climates. That chaos all but …More

Republican Congressman Steve King of Iowa spoke at Thursday's Conservative Political Action Conference and stirred the crowd with his fiery truth telling. Finally, someone had the courage and conviction to speak out against the communist menace of energy efficient lightbulbs. For too long these tiny flickers of anti-Americanism have been allowed to spark throughout our land, lighting the way for pinko commies, secret Muslims, tax-and-spend Democrats, liberal Nazis, vegetarians and other terrorist groups to wash away our God-given liberties using the slow, corrosive trickle of nanny state tyranny from their low-flow showerheards "I want my liberty back," King bravely declared.

According to TheHill.com:

King compared the Capitol Hill janitors who replaced the lightbulbs in his office with lower-energy bulbs to the East German communist secret police, describing them as "Nancy [Pelosi]'s Stasi troops," and complained of a water-saving showerhead in his shower.

It's about time someone spoke out on this peril to our liberty. Liberals argue that energy efficient lightbulbs like LED (Light Emitting Diode, or as I like to call it, Liberty Eroding Disaster) and CFL (Compact Flourescent Light, or more accurately, Commie Friggin' Losers) save money over time as compared to traditional incandescent bulbs (the mom, baseball and apple pie of home illumination) and are better for the environment. They've even gone so far as to mandate that incandescents (the same kind our Founding Fathers would have used) be 30% more efficient starting this year. This amounts to nothing less than a full-on War on Liberty, threatening not just our desk lamps, but our entire way of life. We wouldn't stand for it if Hitler said he just needed to conquer 30% of Europe would we? What if Obama bin President dictated that 30% of America be governed by Shariah Law? What if his fascist health care plan called for 30% of our senior citizens to be summarily executed by doctors?

Of course, Nancy …More

Big East basketball returns to Providence in full swing this month, as new PC head coach Ed Cooley leads his Friars into conference play. While fans are enjoying the on-court action, the real action will be happening behind the scenes in the conference’s Providence office, where major changes are afoot. Though the Big East still maintains a high profile presence in our fair city – both on and off the court – it’s evident that in practice, the conference has long since abandoned its birthplace.

What was once a collection of small, Northeastern, largely Catholic universities that played gritty, physical basketball has now become a sprawling behemoth that’s undergoing a bit of an identity crisis. The Big East has always been a basketball conference, but the real money in college athletics is in football. What is Commissioner John Marinatto to do?

The answer, beginning back in his predecessor Mike Tranghese’s time, has been aggressive expansion into football by reeling in big names like Miami, Rutgers, West Virginia and Virginia Tech. Marinatto carried on that tradition by luring Texas Christian University eastward from the football-heavy Mountain West Conference. No question, the Big East is serious about football.

The question remains, however, is football serious about the Big East? Of the five above-mentioned schools, only Rutgers will still be a member past 2014. Miami and Virginia Tech both departed for the more football-centric Atlantic Coast Conference in 2004. West Virginia will break for the football powerhouse Big 12 in 2014. TCU reversed its decision to join the Big East, also opting for the Big 12.

Indeed, Commissioner Marinatto’s dreams of becoming a major player in the multi-billion dollar industry that is college football may never materialize. Boston College, a founding member of the Big East, followed Virginia Tech and Miami to the ACC in 2005. Earlier this year, the ACC poached Syracuse and Pittsburgh, a founding member and …More