Fireworks? Family picnics? What makes you feel patriotic on 4th of July?

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

For many years, my friend Eve hosted an old-fashioned Fourth of July picnic in the meadow behind her home. Hayrides, sack races, softball and tug-of-war. Grilled chicken, marinated onions, tomatoes and smores. Red, white and blue bunting. After dark, fireworks.

And a flatbed equipped with a microphone and speakers, for anyone who wanted to do a reading, lead a sing-a-long or, in general, speak their piece. After three decades, a production of this magnitude for some 200 invited guests became too much. Knowing that last year’s would be the final large-scale Fourth of July picnic in the meadow, I took my turn.

After suggesting that it was unfortunate that people have their patriotism questioned when they voice a vision for their country different than whatever holds popular sway at the time and that intolerance could be found at all ends of the political spectrum, I read a selection of quotes about patriotism, some of which are included in those offered here:

“I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” – James Baldwin

“Each nation feels superior to other nations. That breeds patriotism – and wars.” – Dale Carnegie

“There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America.” – Henry Clay

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Security officer Stephen Johns reportedly opened the door for the man police say was his killer.

James W. von Brunn is a native of St. Louis, Missouri. His online biography says he served in World War II.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

If anything positive can come from the tragic shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, it is to shine a light on the creatures who occupy a dark corner of American discourse.

I’ll resist a temptation to compare them with a particular species of insect, but the dictionary on my desk uses the phrase “destructive, annoying or injurious to health” to describe their ilk.

These are people whose lives are consumed by hate for “the other.” They may use a bullhorn in the public square, their free speech rights often protected by police, or the keyboard of a computer at home, sometimes hiding behind a pseudonym.

In the case of Wednesday’s tragedy in the nation’s capital, the alleged shooter – based on the venom on his website – held Jews and blacks in particular contempt. The unfortunate irony is that the security guard killed protecting visitors to a museum recalling the greatest horror inflicted upon the Jewish people was African-American.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, arrive in Washington, D.C., on Sunday.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

Will President Barack Obama “throw Israel under the bus?”

Outlandish as that sounds, that’s the fear expressed by some ardent supporters of Israel in advance of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit Monday to the White House.

While the leaders converse behind closed doors, there could be quite a show outside the White House if large numbers of people demonstrate on behalf of Israel or the Palestinians or on other Middle East issues.

Despite 60 years of support (to varying degrees) from the White House and Capitol Hill, despite tens of billions of dollars of economic and military aid (particularly since the 1967 and 1973 wars), despite the out-sized role of the Jewish community in American politics (especially in support of Democrats) and despite the feverish backing of Christian evangelicals, there are those who believe that the President Obama is prepared to sacrifice Israel to achieve other goals in the region.

To be sure, President Obama has supporters in the Jewish community for his Middle East policies. But a vocal segment that opposes the administration has been filling e-mail inboxes in recent days.

What’s going on here?

“Obama is changing the rules of Mideast pressure” was the headline atop an article by veteran Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar in the Israeli newspaper Ha’Aretz. “President George W. Bush enjoyed the title “friend of Israel” because he made do with paying lip service to pressure on Israel and passed around documents that lacked teeth. He taught the Israelis that it is possible to behave contemptuously and make a laughingstock of the road map, all the while preserving a most important strategic asset – special ties with the United States. Obama has already managed to alter the rules of the game of the U.S. in the Middle East; everyone, with no exception, is welcome to choose between understandings and sanctions, between carrots and sticks,” Eldar wrote.

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An addict prepares cocaine paste to smoke.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

Cope Moyers should be dead.

The fact that he’s alive makes me pay attention when he talks about America’s “war on drugs.”

You can hear a pin drop in the room when Moyers tells his story. (Read about it in “Broken: My Story of Addiction and Redemption.” ) In short, he is recovering (there is no “cure”) from addictions to alcohol and crack cocaine.

Moyers worked at a couple of major newspapers before coming to CNN in the early 1990s. His first name is William, but here he was “Cope,” not playing on the celebrity of his father, Bill Moyers, who was White House press secretary under President Lyndon Baines Johnson and is now a well-known author and commentator. We got on well, often talking about our families.

Moyers worked hard to maintain the appearance of being a good employee, husband and father. His colleagues – myself included – were unaware of his descent into a form of hell.

“From the outside, I still looked like a healthy, balanced, ethical young man. On the inside, however, I was raging against everything and everyone, especially myself. I didn’t understand what was happening to me and because no one else could see it or name it for what it was, I was left alone with my tormented self. All my energy became focused on one goal – to keep the inside from showing on the outside, to hide the truth of my misery and my shame from others and even from myself,” Moyers wrote in “Broken.”

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Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

Be careful who you call old.

Ask a baby boomer – one of those more than 77 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 – how old is “old.”

The oldest baby boomers are now 63-years-old; the youngest only 45. The oldest include Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Cher, Reggie Jackson and Sally Field. Among the youngest are Jeff Bezos, Barry Bonds, Michelle Obama, Keanu Reeves and Sarah Palin.

The boomers have shaped the culture and politics of our time. Their movement over the next 20 years from the workforce to whatever they do next and their needs, especially for health care, will ripple through the economy. Love them (and their critics suggest the boomers are in love with themselves) or hate them (for their perceived unwillingness to exit center stage quietly), right now they still rule the roost.

The Mature Market Institute, an arm of the MetLife insurance company, surveyed more than 1,000 each of the oldest and youngest boomers. The results reveal notably different views of the world.

Old, to what the institute calls “leading edge” boomers, “is 78-years-old, compared with 71-years-old for the “trailing edge” boomers. It all depends on how many candles there are on your birthday cake.

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President Obama and Turkish President Abdullah Gul hold a joint news conference Monday.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

Armenian-Americans have April 24 circled on their calendars and they’ll be paying close attention to what President Obama says – or does not say – about that day.

Armenians call April 24 their day of remembrance, marking the day in 1915 that they say Turks began a campaign to destroy their community, a period of several years that resulted in deaths of between 1 million and 1.5 million Armenians.

The Armenians call it a genocide.

The Turks reject that language. From the Turkish perspective, there were killings, but on both sides of an ethnic conflict. World War I was underway, this was not a deliberate program to exterminate a people, the Turks say, and they claim that Armenians overstate the number of casualties.

“Race extermination” is what then-U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau Sr. called it in cables to the State Department. The word “genocide” itself did not enter the lexicon until some 30 years later.

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Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

Sometimes I wish I’d finished the economics half of that double major.

Then again, I’m not sure what good it would be doing me now. I mean, these “masters of the universe” have so loused up the economy that even Greenspan and Buffett are left scratching their heads. And if they are befuddled,  what chance do the rest of us have to figure out what’s going on?

I remember the guys in the health club locker room 15 years ago, sitting around watching the cable TV business channels. Occasionally you heard someone cheer, as if he were watching a game.  Those were better days, with more arrows pointing up than down. Now people with 401K’s hesitate to open the envelopes with the monthly statements. The bar charts look stairways to the basement.

Retirement is fast-becoming a  foreign word, something chuckled about with friends. “I think I’ll be working forever,” a veteran nurse sighed the other night, as we watched our sons’ high school soccer game.

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On April 1, census employees around the country – like this one — will take begin the federal roll call.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

There are a lot of reasons you should care about the U.S. Census.

It’s your tax dollars at work, some 300 billion of them allocated based on Census data.

It’s your voice in Congress, as House seats are apportioned based on Census data.

It’s your voice locally, as Census data is used to draw legislative districts and school boundaries.

For the next year, it may appear that the Census Bureau is stalking you.

Okay, maybe stalking is too strong a term for a branch of the government, but the Census Bureau wants to make sure everyone understands the importance of the Census.

April 1, 2010, is the day the federal government will obey the Constitution and attempt to count every American.

So, a year in advance, the Census Bureau is starting its campaign to convince Americans to fill out that form when the time comes.

Good luck. The first time the Census was taken was 1790 by federal agents on horseback. The population then was counted at 3.9 million people. In 2000, the Census recorded more than 281 million Americans. As of this writing the Census estimates the population at 306 million.

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Superman #14, cover art. Artist: Fred Ray. (c) 1941 DC Comics. All rights reserved.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

Our entertainment unit recently reported on superhero characters created during the Depression, among them Superman, Batman, Captain America and Wonder Woman.

Well, we’re in an economic pickle now, so who qualifies as a hero?

The most recent survey available came from the week before the inauguration in January, when the Harris Poll asked more than 2,600 adults to name their heroes, not prompting them with any names.

Given the timing, it probably was no surprise that Barack Obama topped the list.

The remainder of the top 10 were, in order: Jesus Christ, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Abraham Lincoln, John McCain, John F. Kennedy, Chesley Sullenberger and Mother Theresa.

In case you don’t recognize the name Sullenberger, he was the pilot – the hero pilot – who put that commercial airliner down safely in the Hudson River, saving 159 lives.

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Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

A public rebuke of the First Lady will get you noticed, but it’s unlikely to get your calls and e-mails returned by the White House.

Military Families United (MFU), which bills itself as “the nation’s premier military family policy advocacy organization,” says it is feeling a cold shoulder from the Obama White House.

The leadership of MFU – formed in 2008 and claiming 60,000 member families – already was irritated at not being consulted in advance of decisions about the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and photographs of flag-draped caskets arriving at Dover AFB, Del. So, when its bid to assist with Michelle Obama’s March 12 visit to Fort Bragg, N.C., was rebuffed, out went this letter:

“We at Military Families United were excited at the prospect of working with your office to ensure that the voices and stories of our military families were heard by the American people and the world. However, after numerous attempts to contact your office, our phone calls have been unreturned and emails have gone unanswered. When we learned of your trip to Fort Bragg this week we reached out to your office and to Fort Bragg offering our help in coordinating meetings between you and military families, but were told that our help was unwanted and unneeded. We are the largest military family organization in the nation and we want to work with you. Unfortunately, our attempts thus far to assist you and your staff have been turned away,” read the March 11 letter issued in the name of MFU president John Ellsworth.

Brian Wise, executive director of Military Families United, declines to identify who he says told him “in no uncertain terms” that “there is no need for you all to be involved,” that the Fort Bragg event was being handled by the base and the White House.

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