"There is no way to peace. Peace is the way."

I woke this morning, the last of my vacation, intent on nothing more than getting the coffee going and finding the Seahawks-Saints game on my computer. The first thing I saw online was the headline about Representative Giffords' shooting.

My first impulse was to wonder what's happened to my country since I left it. Then I remembered the Kennedys, and King, and Wallace, and Reagan, and Lennon. The mad impulse to murder is nothing new.

But politicians and pundits didn't use to talk about "Second Amendment remedies" and tell their followers, "Don't retreat; reload" and post gun sights over the districts of their political opponents.

I'm scared for my country, and today, though I know it's insane, somehow almost feel more secure to be here-- fifty miles from a wicked dictator's missiles pointed at my apartment-- than there.

The little girl killed in the Tucson assault was born on September 11, 2001.