U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey (R) and Fred Zeidman (L), Chairman of U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, DC. The Department of Justice has donated copies of its records against alleged Nazi war criminals living in the U.S.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

What would you do about a small number of men, the youngest in their 80s and generally not in the greatest of health, who immigrated to the United States after World War II and have been living working-class American lives for decades. They have wives, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They also stand accused of participating in the extermination of 6 million Jews and countless others in Nazi concentration camps.

While exact numbers are hard to come by, an estimated 90,000 to 125,000 Holocaust survivors live in the United States, the youngest in their late 60s and early 70s. They remember grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles and siblings beaten or shot to death, starved in forced labor camps or gassed and their bodies burned in the crematoria of death camps whose names remain infamous.

Some forgive; many don’t. They want justice, no matter how many years have passed.

What do you do about these old men, let nature take its course or find them, prosecute them and deport them?

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Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

What’s the spread on the big game?

At this writing the University of Florida is a three point favorite to beat Oklahoma University for the mythical championship of college football.

But let’s consider another spread. This one has the Gators at minus-346 and the Sooners at minus-238.

What’s this all about? We’ll get to that in a moment, but first a digression.

Years ago, a half dozen or so sports fans who work at CNN had a heated discussion over lunch regarding college sports.

What is the purpose of a university, a cynic asked, to educate or to put a top 10 football team on the field?

Listen, that football team provides publicity for the school and brings in money that supports other, “lesser” sports, one stalwart replied.

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Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

To understand reaction in the Jewish community to the growing scandal around investor Bernie Madoff, it helps to know a few words of Yiddish.

Yiddish was the language of Jews in Eastern Europe, with a rich history in literature, theater and music, until that community was decimated in the Holocaust. Today Yiddish is most common in communities of Orthodox Jews.

But for most American Jews it harkens back to previous generations and life in the old country, spoken more by “alta kockers,”
though “bubbie” (grandmother) and “zaide” (grandfather) probably don’t appreciate being referred to as geezers.

Madoff was a “macher” (a big shot, a mover-and-shaker) among machers.

Madoff also is - allegedly - a “gonif” (thief, embezzler). A few folks have used Yiddish words regarding parentage and body parts, but we’ll skip those.

The Jewish community is “farklemt” (depressed, distraught, grieving), but it goes beyond that.

The whole thing is a “shandah” (disgrace). For those concerned with image, it’s a shandah for the “goyim” (non-Jews, in front of whom Jewish community looks bad).

“Catastrophe” and “devastation” are English words being used.

“It’s an atomic bomb in the world of Jewish philanthropy,” Mark Charendoff, president of the Jewish Funders Network, an organization that advises wealthy Jewish donors, told the Forward, a newspaper that reports on Jewish affairs. “There’s going to be fallout from this for years.”

In the United States, at least one charity has closed. “It’s devastating,” Arthur Epstein, a major supporter of local Jewish charities, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, referring to the loss of the Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation near Boston and the programs it supported.

An American university professor e-mailed me from Jerusalem that the Madoff case is all that’s being discussed in the philanthropic world in Israel, where there is fear that more than 50 organizations that Madoff supported or that invested in his firm may shut down before “Shabbat,” the Sabbath that begins at sunset Friday.

That fear in the Jewish community extends from the Los Angeles to Boca Raton and Palm Beach, from New York City to Washington, D.C., to Boston and points elsewhere around the globe.

With losses ranging from tens of thousands to tens of millions of dollars, the casualties include national Jewish organizations; local Jewish federations, which support programs throughout their communities; charities and foundations supporting a range of causes; hospitals and schools, from elementary through university. Published reports say that one school, Yeshiva Univ., may have lost as much as $100 million.

Untold numbers of children, students, teachers and researchers, the needy and the disabled, retirees of modest means and some of wealth will suffer anonymously.

Some victims of the alleged swindle have well-known names: Spielberg, Wiesel, Lautenberg, Zuckerman.

Gary Tobin, president of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, which studies Jewish philanthropy, told the Forward, “The Jewish philanthropic world depends on personal relationships and personal solicitations. Many Jewish philanthropies are dependent on high-end donors in very close social and economic networks, and this guy is right in middle of them.”

Writing in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, Bradley Burston recognized that at least one segment of society would find advantage in the situation.

“For the true anti-Semite, Christmas came early this year,” Burston wrote. “Rich beyond human comprehension, he handles fortunes for others, buying and selling in a trading empire that skirts investment banks and other possible sources of regulation. He redefines avarice, knowingly and personally bilking charities and retirees in the most classic of con games. Even better, for those obsessed with the idea that Jews control finance, entertainment and the media, is the idea that Madoff’s greed was uncontrollable enough that he targeted fellow Jews, even Holocaust survivors, some of them his own friends, as well as Israeli companies who insured Jews, including Holocaust survivors. The beauty part, for the anti-Semite: Madoff’s machinations, which could have been put to use for the sake of humanity, have directly harmed Jewish welfare and charity institutions.”

Now that is a shandah.

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, was arrested Tuesday on federal corruption charges.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

With apologies to the late Mike Royko, the Chicago newspaper columnist, who would have relished this spectacle.

A governor of Illinois . . . busted on corruption charges.
Tell me something new.
He wanted to make money.
Yawn.
(Should you be wondering, the taxpayers of Illinois pay their governor $155,600 a year.)

Okay, so the feds say Rod Blagojevich wanted to sell or trade a seat in the U.S. Senate for personal gain.
This is Illinois, after all.
This is a state where back in the 1950s the Auditor of State Accounts embezzled more than $6 million from state coffers (he really liked automobiles, especially the fancy kind) and where back in the 1970s $800,000 was found in a shoebox and other containers in the hotel room closet of a Secretary of State when he died. And countless local officials and inspectors who have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar or - sometimes on camera - taking much smaller amounts in bribes.
It’s just a matter of scale.

Then again, there are only 100 seats in the U.S. Senate, so what’s that leather chair worth?
Well, according to the feds, Blagojevich was “interested in making” $250,000-300,000 from the deal.
That seems cheap.
True, U.S. Senators are paid “only” $169,300 a year, but the job comes with a government-backed pension plan and health benefits - nothing to sneeze at in this economy.
But when they leave office, Senators can make a lot more money as lobbyists; by one estimate deemed conservative, as much as $4.5 million in 12 years.
Twelve years, that’s the length of two terms in the Senate.

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Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National editor

Confirmation of what already was apparent - that the economy is in recession – sent me to the basement.

I found the box filled with hundreds of articles I wrote between 1978 and 1983 for the Quad-City Times, the largest newspaper for a community that straddles the Mississippi River and includes the cities of Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa and Rock Island and Moline in Illinois.

On a map, the “Quads” are dots in the heartland; from an airplane, urban breaks in the fertile land that feeds not only a nation, but much of the world.

A fistful of those articles reported on the battering the Quad-Cities economy took in those years, in particular the farm and construction machinery industry and the men and women who worked for such companies as home-grown John Deere and International Harvester, J.I. Case and Caterpillar Tractor.

Their wages and benefits were the product of often heated negotiations between these companies and the United Auto workers and other unions. In good times, they bought new pickup trucks, vans and campers and boats to fish the Mississippi and Rock rivers.

Then came the last major recession suffered by this country. The farm economy crashed. Demand for tractors, combines and other equipment fell.

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David Schechter
CNN Senior National editor

Some people have been puzzled or surprised that a Jewish Center, called a Chabad house, was attacked in Mumbai. It’s true that the Jewish population in India numbers just a few thousand — in a country of billions. But Jews have a long history in India, maybe 2,500 years; and some say they are descended from one of the 10 lost tribes of Israel.

Most of India’s Jews live in Mumbai, making it a natural place to find Chabad, a movement within Orthodox Judaism that sends emissaries world-wide from its headquarters in the Crown Heights section of New York City.

Mumbai also is a center of international business and a city frequented by young Israelis, who set off to see the world after completing their military service obligation and before entering university. Chabad is even big in Katmandu.

Chabad is an acronym of the Jewish words for wisdom, understanding and knowledge. Though rooted in the oldest of Jewish beliefs, Chabad also spreads its message online at www.chabad.org. And if you’d like to know more, a good read about Chabad is “The Rebbe’s Army” by Sue Fishkoff.

Watch Nic Robertson’s report on the stand-off at a Chabad in Mumbai.

Space shuttle Endeavour lifted off at 7:55 p.m. ET last Friday, en route to the international space station.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

A former colleague once lamented that - contrary to the expectations of our early 1960s childhood - space travel for the average American man and woman would not be realized in our lifetimes. Fewer than 500 humans have soared beyond Earth’s grasp; military test pilots, specially-trained astronauts and, more recently, a handful of wealthy people who have paid for passage aboard a Russian craft.

I thought of this tonight as I stood in my driveway and stared into the evening darkness. At 6.13 p.m., as forecasted, a bright light traveled from southwest to northeast, emerging above the trees across the street and passing overhead until its disappeared through trees behind the house. It had the look of a star and cruised at an altitude well beyond that of anairliner.

I craned my neck to follow the space shuttle Endeavour, gradually turning my body 180 degrees. I marveled at this rare sight with the kind of uninhibited emotion (“that’s really neat”) you give up passing from childhood into adolescence and then adulthood. Today, with satellites beaming live signals of the world to itself (including from the shuttle, thanks to the NASA channel), it is easy to lose the wonder of seeing something with your own eyes.

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Impact Your World: The global food market’s shelves are getting bare and hunger activists say it will get worse. As the nation marks World Hunger Relief Week, more people are asking: Why are so many people starving and what, if anything, can be done to eradicate hunger? Learn how you can help

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David Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

The young man, wearing a shirt and a tie, turned up just as the pantry operated by an Iowa food bank was closing for the night.

He knew it was after-hours. That’s why he was there.

He kept his gaze downward as he told the woman from the food bank that he had lost his job, had a wife and kids and was too embarrassed and ashamed to stand in line to receive a bag of groceries that hopefully would feed his family for a week.

I have a master’s degree. I shouldn’t have to do this, he said.

I heard this story last December, a few weeks before the Iowa presidential caucus.

Throughout this election season I talked with professionals and volunteers at food banks and pantries across the country.

The refrain was the same from Oregon to South Carolina, from Maine to Texas: Demand was rising, easily outstripping supply.

More and more new faces were standing in line; not looking anyone else in the eye, hoping not to be recognized by friends or neighbors.
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David Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

In at 6.50 a.m. Out by 7.50 a.m.

Not bad considering the hours-long waits endured by people in my county who chose to vote early.

In the pre-dawn dark of an Indian summer day, I pulled on jeans, a t-shirt and a sweatshirt and made the short drive to my children’s grade school. Inside Oak Grove Elementary I found a not-too-long line stretching from the cafeteria down a familiar hallway lined with art projects and book reports written on leaves cut from brown construction paper.

A few people read morning newspapers. I turned on my iPod (Dvorzak’s “New World Symphony” felt like a good choice for Election Day) and read a summary of the three state ballot initiatives. I nodded to a neighbor from down the street and recognized the parents of a few of my kids’ friends.

A pair of poll workers – senior citizens, a man and a woman – walked the line, checking a printout of the voter rolls to make sure everyone in line was registered to vote at the school. Beneath my name was that of my 18-year-old daughter, who today cast her first vote. My wife uses her maiden name, so she was elsewhere on the list.

[My wife and daughter voted about 11.45 a.m. and reported only a short line and little waiting time. My daughter, who reads newspapers (real ink-on-paper variety), wishes she had studied more on the local issues. She’s not alone.]

If you were age 75 or older, you could go to the front of the line. Despite his wife’s urging, one silver-haired gent said no, he would wait with everyone else, but he relented when everyone else urged him forward.

Once the hour reached 7 a.m., the line started forward, slowly and amiably. Inside the cafeteria, where I have been entertained by my children’s classmates at lunch, I signed the standard identification form. This was checked against the master list (by computer, not those heavy books of the past). I was given a yellow plastic card and directed to another line. By my calculations I would be the 110th person to vote.

There were 14 voting booths set up in a row. I would vote on a Diebold “accu-vote” machine. The absence of a paper trail for each voter has many states moving away from this type of machine.

Georgia had a relatively long ballot this year. After making by selection for President, I patiently moved on to the U.S. House of Representatives and local judges, sheriff, county executive, school board members and public service commissioners (several of these people running unopposed) and those ballot initiatives. I wavered on one of them, voting no and then changing my mind to vote yes. I confess to relying on friends and members of my congregation for advice on some of the local races.

Reviewing my choices, I realized that I had neglected to vote in the U.S. Senate race. That list was next to the presidential candidates and easy to overlook. I made my selection and touched the screen to send my votes into overall count. The yellow card popped out and in exchange for it I received a sticker with a picture of a peach, a symbol of the state.

Then it was back home for breakfast, a change of clothes and a drive to work, where I would spent the next dozen or so hours dealing with voting issues from across the country. Fortunately, I had none.