■"Kansas as No. 1," editorial, Wall Street Journal, 24 November 2004, p. A12.

Gotta admit I was impressed with the Kansas-Missouri area when I visited just before Thanksgiving. As we consider where we might live next, it ranks rather high, thanks to the Southwest hub in KC, the fact that youíre roughly two hours by air to either coast (West coast trips are hard for me now living way up in New England), plus by car youíre within a day of so much of America (like Denver, Dallas, Twin Cities, Chicago, my mother-in-law in Indiana). Would be hard to leave the ocean, but not the East Coast. Frankly, my pulse drops quite a bit just driving around a far less settled place like KS or MO. Out East itís so crowded and it shows in the way people interact with one another.

So maybe weíll ìmigrate for freedom,î as the WSJ says, noting that Kansas ranked number one in their annual state freedom indexing, conducted with the Heritage Foundation. Based on a number of variables, to include tax rates, state spending, occupation licensing, environmental regulations, income redistribution, right-to-work laws, minimum wage and tort law, Kansas came out on top. Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts all ranked in the lowest fifth, to no surprise.

It was probably be easier maintaining my Democratic identity there as well, surrounded by all those Republicans. Hard to keep your sense of who you are politically when you live in a one-party state.

If we were to move to Kansas, wouldnít I be giving up all my military connectivity? Strange this is right now in my career, but I probably need to leave the Defense Department to maintain connectivity to the military. Where PNM takes me right now is to the other three services (Marines, Army, Air Force) far more than to the Navy, where Iím currently located. To get and maintain the professional connectivity I think my career is calling for right now, I will likely need to move into a situation where I can maintain a looser employment situation while simultaneously forging stronger links with those services I have up to now largely ignored. That will mean periodic travel all over the dial, and that speaks to a central geographic location, which a Kansas City metro region provides, along with that nifty, Southwest hub.