Opinion

Dear Annie: My recently divorced brother has a new girlfriend. He has been divorced for three months. She has introduced him to all of her friends and family. She was married 20 years and went through a bitter divorce and had several bad dating experiences from dating sites. She seems to be elated to find a nice guy like my brother. She seems to think he’s too good to be true and even did a background check on him.

Headlines are now filled with names reported to be on Donald Trump’s “shortlist” of possible VP candidates. These individuals, some of whom I know, indeed have serious qualifications and experience and are appropriate to be considered for the No.

Is it fair to ask teenagers to give up sports and parties to care for parents or other older relatives? That’s an important question these days, because so many now do. The Wall Street Journal reported on a 15-year-old high school kid, Leo Remis, who is helping his disabled mother.

You know the way Shakespeare created a portrait of a family’s hard feelings in King Lear, his tragedy about a raging, storming English king with three daughters? That play, set in Gloucester, speaks to me now of how Congress and the country are falling apart.

Dear Annie: I am a 48-yearold male living at home with my folks and older sister. We are a close-knit family and do things together often.

The public schools in the state of New York doled out $29,284 per pupil in “current expenditures” in fiscal year 2022, said a report published this week by the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.

© 2024 Creators Syndicate Social Security Administration Services: The People Speak In last week’s column, I shared the results of a survey I conducted with my readers in which I asked you to rate the service you got from the Social Security Administration using the ubiquitous star system: 5 stars for good service down to 1 star for poor service. I got more than 200 responses.

Dear Annie: I am also a parent of a child who lost his battle with addiction in 2022. There are so many of us with difficult stories to share.

A favorite quote from the recent campus conflicts comes from Adam Young, a freshman at the New School in New York. After student trespassers were arrested and hauled to police headquarters, he complained, “This is not OK ... We’re 18 years old.”

“This may be Biden’s Vietnam.” Bernie Sanders’ warning couldn’t be starker. The campus protests that have raged for weeks feel like 1968 in miniature.