I am originally from Southwestern Pa., 35 miles Southeast of Pittsburgh and 25 miles north of Morgantown, WV.

I am the son, nephew and grandson of coal miners. My paternal grandfather was born and raised in County Sligo, Ireland and my maternal grandfather was born and raised in Essen, Germany. My grandmothers were also from Ireland and Alsace-Lorraine, respectively.

My parents were the first generation born in America.

I am a dual citizen of the USA and the Republic of Ireland. I visit the latter often, the latest being three visits in less than the last five years.

My wife and I talk about retiring to Ireland and we may just go ahead and do that. The only negative is that our children are here. We shall see.

I am a third generation Notre Dame fan, with my Dad (born in 1900) and Grandfather (born in 1864) becoming ND fans in 1913 when they read about ND beating Army with the forward pass.

Since then, all of my uncles, aunts, cousins, siblings, nieces, nephews and children have also been ND fans. It is a family tradition passed down to all, without exception.

I am also a lifelong Pittsburgh Pirates and Pittsburgh Steelers fan. I tend not to pay too much attention to any games not involving ND, the Pirates and the Steelers.

My Dad dropped out of school at age 13 to be a breaker boy in the coal mines to help support his Mom, Dad and 10 siblings.

My Dad developed Black Lung Disease working in the mines and survived his retirement years from age 67 to age 85 only because of Federal Black Lung benefits and Social Security.

My Mom will be 100 years old in December and she still gets Social Security and Black Lung benefits.

I was only able to attend college because of Federal grants and was only able to attend law school because of Federally backed Guaranteed Student Loans.

I would consider myself to be the biggest hypocrite in the world if, after taking advantage of Federal programs to climb the socioeconomic ladder, I would advocate pulling that ladder up so others could not make the same climb.

I am a progressive Democrat. A pretty damn hard core one, at that. I am very liberal on both social and economic issues.

I grew up in a strong labor union supporting, blue collar family. I have never forgotten where I came from or how I was able to move up the ladder due to "liberal" Federal programs.

I witnessed first hand as a child/teenager the way large corporations can wreak havoc on people and an area when the coal companies pulled out of the Southwestern Pa. area after mining all the coal but leaving environmental carnage and other damage behind them.

I have practiced law for 29 years. I am 58 years old. I have three grown children. Two are engineers and one is a nurse. So, I think that I (and they) have been hard working, contributing members of society.

My brother fought and was wounded in Vietnam. Two of my nephews fought and were also wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. One nephew had three combat deployments and was awarded two Bronze Stars. My son was a Marine, as was my father-in-law.

All in all, I am pretty sure that my views on religion and politics would not be very popular here. I am not a big fan of religion in the public square and am not a fan of conservative policies and beliefs.

To steal Kaplony's eloquent phrase: "That's who I am. Piss on you if you don't like it." :)

Anyway, that is my bio. Take care.