Author: Thomas Purcell

I hate to say it, but ObamaCare has been good for me. Now, I know our economy is still struggling – Gallup says the unemployment rate just jumped to nearly 9 percent – and I know ObamaCare uncertainty is making many employers wary of hiring. But I also know that new opportunities exist for people […]

I drove through my old neighborhood last week. It is like many suburban neighborhoods that sprouted up in the 1960s. Many of the people who moved there grew up in the city. All of them wanted big yards in which their kids could play. Many wanted to be near St. Germaine Catholic Church and its […]

After celebrating his 87th birthday last week, semi-retired communist dictator Fidel Castro did something nobody expected him to do: He contacted Pope Francis to hear his confession. “Forgive me, pontiff, for I have sinned. Is 65 years since last confession.” “Sixty-five years!” said the pontiff. “This is going to be a long one. Go on, […]

“What do you mean, Americans have gotten ruder?” “Poll after poll has been showing it in recent years. Nearly 70 percent of respondents to an Associated Press poll said people are ruder than they were 20 or 30 years ago.” “Why would that be?” “Lots of reasons. For starters, life is moving faster these days. […]

I’ve been thinking about the sorry state of American culture, and that made me reminisce about the Cold War. You remember the Cold War. It brought us espionage, alliances with cheesy dictators and a devotion to making bombs. And throughout it all, we lived in constant fear that the Soviets were going to blow us […]

Too many of our political leaders see government as the solution to our challenges. If only they paid more consideration to what some of our great minds had to say about government. My favorite quotations reveal a general wariness of government — a key principle upon which our republic was founded: “A government that is […]

Boy, are some Americans losing interest in marriage these days. According to a National Center for Family and Marriage Research (NCFMR) study, the U.S. marriage rate is on the decline. Whereas 92 out of 1,000 single women married in 1920, only 31 out of 1,000 are marrying today. In a 2011 study, the Pew Research […]

Dear Mom and Dad, It’s been less than a week since you dropped me off at summer camp. You better come get me ’cause I’m in big trouble. On my first day, I was feeling homesick. So I found a piece of wood and began carving it with my Swiss Army knife the way Daddy […]

Get this: Happiness among human beings peaks at age 23, tanks at 55, then peaks again at 69. So says a study by the Center for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, as reported by the U.K.’s Daily Mail newspaper. The findings make sense to me. At 23, you are brimming with life. […]

First-wave baby boomers will begin turning 67 this year – and they’re STILL imposing their ways on younger people, such as tail-end boomers like me. Though maybe I’m still upset about the David Cassidy haircut my sisters made me get in 1973. Like every teen girl then, my sisters were smitten with Cassidy. They exploited […]

Life for kids is harder today than ever before, and I offer up proof: According to a variety of news reports, many elementary schools are eliminating recess. Why would schools do such a heartless thing? Well, these days, teachers are expected to teach kids everything from manners to self-esteem. Teachers need to use recess time […]

Even on the hottest nights of the summer, my father knew how to make our house ice cold. We lived in a modest two-story home typical of the ’60s and ’70s – red brick on the bottom, white aluminum siding on the top. There were four bedrooms upstairs and a master bedroom downstairs (my parent’s […]

The name is: Monday. Agent: Monday. I have an important job to do. Back in 2011 President Obama issued an executive order to root out security violators within the federal government – people like Edward Snowden, our most recent leaker of government secrets. The president ordered federal employees to report suspicious activities among their co-workers – any […]

Here’s something you should do if you haven’t done so in a while: visit your mother and father and get out the old photo box. Surely you have one. Ours is in my parents’ hall closet. It’s in a sturdy old Pabst Blue Ribbon beer case. Lucky for me, I needed some photos for a […]

In the course of human events it is necessary, now and again, to reaffirm some of the thoughts and principles we have lost sight of. And so it is that we need to renew our independence. More than 55 percent of Americans now receive some form of federal government benefit – and many of us […]

I long for the sounds of summer I knew as a kid. In the ’60s and ’70s, you see, most of our neighbors kept their windows open day and night, allowing the outside sounds to come in and the inside sounds to go out. I woke every morning to the birds chirping outside my window […]

I don’t know what President Obama was thinking. Speaking in Northern Ireland last week, he said Catholic schools are divisive: “If towns remain divided – if Catholics have their schools and buildings and Protestants have theirs, if we can’t see ourselves in one another and fear or resentment are allowed to harden -that too encourages […]

“Let’s go, he can’t hit, he can’t hit.” “Stop the game! How dare you suggest that the batter, an innocent 12-year-old child who only wants to make contact with the ball, cannot hit! Have you considered how your ridicule will harm his self-esteem? As the umpire of this game, I forbid you to utter such […]

Get this: A new study finds men don’t mature until age 43. If only my father could have enjoyed such a luxury. Great Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper reports that the study, commissioned by Nickelodeon UK, examined differences in maturity between men and women. It found both sexes agree that men are far less mature and […]

“Admit it. You’re a dirty rotten conservative!” “That’s false. I eat tofu for breakfast.” “But we found your name on a donor list of a group that sought 501(c)(4) status to promote the founding principles of the U.S. Constitution!” “You’re mistaking me for someone else with the same name. I listen to Barry Manilow records.” […]

I don’t know what I was thinking: In 1973, when I was 11, I flushed an apple core down the toilet, an action I would come to regret. As it went, my father had remodeled our basement into a family room. He installed the inexpensive pine paneling common to the times. He also built a […]

Washington, D.C., is in the grip of scandals, the economy is stumbling and a host of other challenges are weighing me down – which is why I prefer to dwell on more obscure subjects, such as a battle raging behind the scenes over the 2020 Olympics. According to the Toronto Star, the International Olympic Committee […]

Imagine you are a 19-year-old Marine. You are riding in a Humvee with four other Marines – your friends – when an improvised explosive device (IED) explodes. Two of your friends die instantly, but you are “lucky.” Though bloodied and bruised, you survive to fight another day. You will fight many more days, too. With […]

What to get for the contemporary male who has everything? The Man Bag. The Man Bag is a high-style satchel – a purse, though its creators hate when you call it that. It’s designed to hold the modern man’s wallet, keys, sunglasses, iPod, cell phone, body spray, hair goop, diary and whatever other junk he […]

Bill Clinton, wearing a white toga and a crown of gold, sat in a garden while attractive women fed him grapes. President Obama, having just suffered the most devastating week of his presidency, sat nearby, seeking advice in the art of telling whoppers. Using the Socratic method of teaching, Clinton began to tutor his new […]

I don’t know who they are, but I’ve got to hand it to them. I’m too cynical to do what they do. I speak of the Americans who, every year, donate money to pay down America’s national debt. The Bureau of the Public Debt – part of the Treasury Department – began allowing such donations […]

Students, faculty, family members and friends, it is my great honor to deliver your commencement speech today. It is my opinion that our society must take every opportunity to praise our young people for their hard work and accomplishment, and that is why ceremonies such as this are so important to our country’s future. It […]

Here’s one potential advance in science that has me worried: human beings may eventually live a really long time. According to the World Future Society, we are in the early phases of a superlongevity revolution. Thanks to advances nanotechnology and cell and gene manipulation, scientists may eventually learn how to keep humans alive from 120 […]

Online chat host: Good morning, cyber pals. As you know, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), the psychiatric “bible,” is to be released this month. It will include “Internet-Use Disorder” – also referred to as Internet addiction – as a condition recommended for further psychiatric study. Our guest […]