This morning it came across the airwaves once again - the same phrase I've heard dozens of times in the past few months.  And each time I heard it, it breezed through me, without registering as untrue or unusual or incorrect:

"A Free Nation is a Peaceful Nation".  A Free Nation is a Peaceful Nation.

It's generally an agreeable concept, to be sure.  But is it true?  If free nations are peaceful nations, then how does our President explain the actions of his own country?  After all, the United States of America, the patented Land of the Free, has spent most of the past century at war with someone or something.  The current target is something called terra or someone called evildoers, depending on the month, but history seems to indicate that if it wasn't this enemy, it would be some other.  A War on Saltwater or a War on Chicken farming or a War on War.  Whatever the case, the United States does not have a peaceful recent history.

I am running against Mike Pence for Congress in Indiana's 6th.  This is not asking for money, or announcing some initiative, or a PR effort.  
I am angry, I am disappointed, and I am appalled.
I reference the 11/28/05 US News and World Report
where Congressman Pence wants Iraq to be more like Football. I am angry.
It's 50 or 60,000 US vs. 2000 them.
See Below

This is not about conspiracy theories, assassinations or JFK's death.  This is about his life---in particular, two days in his last year of life that I remember as the high points of his presidency, especially in terms of the future---our future, and beyond.

He is remembered by a single soundbite from his elegant Inaugural (that gets ever briefer each time---an entire generation may now believe that all he said was two words, "Ask not.") Historians may rightly point to the Berlin crisis in 1961 and especially the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

But on this anniversary of his death, I want to highlight two consecutive days in June 1963.  They stand out on this day in particular because it seems to me, if somehow JFK had learned he had one year to live, he would have done pretty much what he did throughout 1963, and these two summer days would be the summer of his life and legacy.