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It was the blue of the sky that suddenly grabbed my attention. Then it was the various shades of green in the trees around me. I was taking a walk in my neighborhood Wednesday afternoon when the beauty around me hit me so hard that it almost hurt my heart to feel it all.

For this moment in time, I couldn’t imagine being in any place on earth more beautiful. I couldn’t imagine anything more perfect than the stunning colors and shades and smells of my surroundings. It wasn’t just beauty, though. It was an emotional feeling that welled up inside.

It was about being in the place called home.

I don’t understand nationalism or patriotism anymore. George Bernard Shaw said, “Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it….” I don’t have any particular argument at the moment with those who feel differently. I’m just saying that I’ve come to a point in life when I don’t feel connected to a country or a government. But I understand what it means to love the land you call home.

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For months, Republicans have been trying to use what happened at Benghazi as the weapon with which to mortally wound Barack Obama’s second term. Although it seems clear to me that some terribly bad judgement was used connected with Benghazi (and it’s clear the administration lied about it subsequently), there’s no way it was something to bring an administration down. It was just politically embarrassing.

The brewing IRS scandal, on the other hand, is starting to look as though Richard Nixon rose from the grave and started giving Democrats political advice for the past few years.

You’ve heard about the scandal already, so I’m not going to waste time covering the specific allegations, partly because you can read them elsewhere and partly because it’s still early in the story, so the facts are developing. All we know is that the Internal Revenue Service used agents to give extra scrutiny to conservative groups and also leaked confidential information to media about conservative groups. (ProPublica is a progressive left media group, and it’s the one admitting that it was given the documents.)

Nobody is questioning that it happened. The question is how widespread it was and who directed it. First, we were told that it was limited to just one IRS office. Then it became clear that IRS officials in Washington were involved. How high did it go? Nobody outside the government knows yet.

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On March 4, I got an email from Chris Kahn. We had only been friends on Facebook for about a year and a half, but I’d come to like and respect him. He remembered that I’d had a bout with cancer last year, so he had some questions.

“I have not gotten the results from the biopsy yet, but my gastroenterologist and oncologist are fairly certain the tumor in my esophagus is cancerous,” Chris wrote. He said the doctor was making plans for chemo, radiation and surgery. “I am not really happy with the idea, but there may be no other option. If you have any thoughts you’d like to share, I’d appreciate it.”

Just 41 days later, Chris was dead.

After his initial message about the surgery, I posted the details of his situation and asked others for treatment options. Nothing interesting and viable turned up.

I didn’t keep up with the specifics of how he was doing, but I knew he was getting treatment. On March 12 — just eight days after his initial message to me — he posted on Facebook about the way his situation looked.

“It has started to spread,” he wrote. “The reality kind of sunk in today. This may kill me.”

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