Brendan Cox, Patch Staff

<b>Email: </b>brendan.cox&#64;patch.com<b><br>Phone: </b>(203) 500-4039<b><br>Hometown: </b>North Haven, Conn.<b><br>Birthday: </b>Oct. 17, 1987<br><b>Bio: </b>Brendan grew up in Seymour and Woodbridge, Conn. He graduated from Amity Regional High School, where we wrote music reviews and completed coursework in video production, in 2005. 

He attended the University of New Haven, where he pursued a degree in computer engineering, from 2005-06. Upon transferring to the University of Connecticut at Storrs, he switched to the College of Liberal Arts and pursued a degree in journalism. He lived and worked in Storrs, Mansfield, and Willington, Conn. during that time.

In August 2009, Brendan graudated with a B.A. in Journalism with a minor in Anthropology. He quickly landed his first job as a staff writer at Citizen&#39;s News, a weekly newspaper covering Naugatuck, Beacon Falls, and Prospect, Conn. In May 2010, he was named editor.

In October 2010, Brendan joined Patch as the local editor for North Branford. He lives in North Haven with his girlfriend, Stephanie, but is planning a move to North Branford in the near future.

Before launching his career in new media and journalism, Brendan held various positions in the food service, retail, construction and maintenance sectors. He is an avid musician and plays electric bass in a Hartford-based indie-folk band. His DVD collection attests to his appreciation of fine (and not-so-fine) cinema, and his love for the short stories of Ernest Hemingway is outsized and almost certainly irrational.

You can e-mail Brendan at brendan.cox&#64;patch.com or call him at (203) 500-4039.

<b>Your Beliefs</b><br>At Patch, we promise always to report the facts as objectively as possible and otherwise adhere to the principles of good journalism. However, we also acknowledge that true impartiality is impossible because human beings have beliefs. So in the spirit of simple honesty, our policy is to encourage our editors to reveal their beliefs to the extent they feel comfortable. This disclosure is not a license for you to inject your beliefs into stories or to dictate coverage according to them. In fact, the intent is the opposite: we hope that the knowledge that your beliefs are on the record will cause you to be ever mindful to write, report and edit in a fair, balanced way. And if you ever see evidence that we failed in this mission, please let us know.<br><br><b>Politics </b><br><i>How would you describe your political beliefs?</i>

On the social issues, I skew mostly leftward: I support the full rights of homosexuals, including their equal rights to marriage. I believe abortion is morally acceptable is many cases, though not in all. I believe our country should do more to mitigate illegal immigration while streamlining the process of legal immigration. I do not think affirmative action is a tenable social policy and believe a proactive approach -- and not a reactive one -- would do more to ease racial tensions arising from income and access inequality. I oppose legislative efforts to control what I eat or drink. I support the rights of gun owners; while I see no immediate need for a civilian to have a fully-automatic assault weapon, I fully recognize his right to own and bear one. I support the death penalty only when there is no doubt of the offender&#39;s culpability and his or her crime was the taking of another&#39;s life.

Fiscally speaking, I am generally conservative. I think both the U.S. Congress and the Connecticut General Assembly should enforce strict spending caps. I would support the abolition of the U.S. income tax in favor of an augmented national sales tax. I believe the state should stay out of collective bargaining and that public labor unions wield far too much power both locally and nationally, allowing them to leverage benefits that are slowly but surely bankrupting government -- and, in turn, taxpayers -- at every level. Entitlement spending is out of control, though neither I nor anyone else, it appears, knows what to do about it.

At the same time, I fully support the regulation of big business and especially the banking, insurance, private defense, pharmaceutical and agribusiness industries. I believe in universal health care, though I see no real way to pay for under our current system. I am not specifically an opponent of &#34;Big Government,&#34; and I reject the notion that &#34;the more government tries to do, the less it does well.&#34; I don&#39;t believe there is now or ever has been a socialist agenda among the United States&#39; political leadership.

<i>Are you registered with a certain party?</i>

I am a registered Republican, but I have no allegiance to any party. I requently vote across party lines. I&#39;m only registered with a party because Connecticut has closed primaries.

<br><b>Religion</b><br>I am not religious, though my immediate family most demonstrably is. I would say I&#39;m somewhere between apathetic and agnostic. I believe it&#39;s impossible to know where a higher power exists, and I have no burning desire to figure out whether one does.<br><b><br>Local Hot-Button Issues</b><br><i>What do you think are the most important issues facing the community?</i>

Being entirely new to the North Branford community, I hope to figure this out in short order.

<i>Where do you stand on each of these issues?</i>

We&#39;ll see.<i><br></i>