Kanye West created a rant when he hijacked Taylor Swift's speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

“We’ve forgotten our table manners.”

I heard that a couple of weeks ago, during a discussion that was supposed to focus on art but devolved into politics. The woman who made the comment was referring not to anything in particular, but everything in general - from this summer’s rancorous town hall meetings on health care to shouts from the floor when the President addressed Congress, from anger at center court of the U.S. Open tennis championships to a rant at the MTV Video Music Awards.

A couple of days later, I read a column by Elizabeth Bernstein in The Wall Street Journal. Bernstein was looking forward to a friend’s visit, until the friend said she was eager to discuss health care reform. “But now the ruckus is spilling over into our private lives. Alarmingly, people who know and even love one another are taking off the gloves and duking it out around dinner tables and water coolers, through phones calls and emails and even on the Web,” she wrote.

“Not so long ago, people tried to be polite in conversation. But that was when they actually listened to each other. These days, there's more shouting than informed discourse, as politicians, pundits and partisans attack each other on television and the Internet. . . The Internet is only making matters worse, as people feel emboldened to say things they would never dare utter to someone's face.”

The Los Angeles Times sought out Pepper Schwartz, a University of Washington sociologist. “Schwartz, a political liberal, believes that the flowering of rude behavior - call it the New Boorishness - took root in the late 1960s when students began challenging authority "for a very good reason: Authority was leading us into Vietnam."

Over time, she said, "we have shredded respect for every kind of institution, every kind of profession, and have indulged ourselves and our emotions at every level of society, from how kids treat their parents, how students treat their teachers and all the way up the line. So why wouldn't it ultimately get onto the tennis courts and presidential speeches?"

If we, the American people, have forgotten those “table manners,” it is not a recent development. It just seems that way. And it’s too easy to blame talk radio and cable television hosts for coarsening the public discourse. I’ll borrow from a commentator who himself borrowed from William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” to admonish his audience when reporting on a controversy generating much public heat. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves,” Edward R. Murrow said at the conclusion of his 1954 documentary demolition of Sen. Joseph McCarthy for the Wisconsin Republican’s often reckless accusations about Communists in the U.S. government.

A reference from the pulpit that led me to an oft-noted essay by historian Richard Hofstadter called “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”, which appeared in Harper’s magazine in 1964. Does any of this sound familiar today?

“American politics has often been an arena for angry minds,” Hofstadter began, but in the campaign of failed Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater he found a demonstration of “how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority.”

Still, Hofstadter did not attribute this to just one end of the spectrum, writing, “But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind.”

Evidence of this “paranoid style” dated back more than a century, Hofstadter wrote, but in 1964 – even before the counter-culture movement took hold and a major escalation of the Vietnam War – Hofstadter observed something else.

“America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high.”

That was then. Today the “radical” left appears no less likely than the “radical” right to suspect the worst from on high.

Is there a solution? The Los Angeles Times noted an effort led by Mark DeMoss, a conservative evangelical Christian who owns a public relations firm in Atlanta, to get people to take a “civility pledge.” The three-line oath: I will be civil in my public discourse and behavior. I will be respectful of others whether or not I agree with them. I will stand against incivility when I see it.”

Sounds simple enough. Maybe we should give it a try.

Bruce Springsteen turns 60-years-old today.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

Happy Birthday to Bruce Springsteen, 60-years-young today.

I bought two tickets when Springsteen came to Atlanta back in April.

Having rocked at one of his shows here several months earlier, I gave these tickets to my teenagers, so that my daughter and son could experience “The Boss” and the E Street Band in concert.

I’ve had that pleasure several times, dating back to September 20, 1975 in Darby Gym at Grinnell College.

That was less than a month after release of the album “Born to Run” and five weeks before Springsteen simultaneously landed on the covers of TIME and Newsweek, back when that was a big deal.

So what was he doing in a small town in Iowa when rock-and-roll stardom beckoned?

Well, more than a year earlier a few of the kids from back East had persuaded the college to book the New Jersey-based Springsteen for what said to be a small, four-digit paycheck.

I sat on the floor about 10 feet from Clarence Clemons for four amazing hours as what appeared to be most of Grinnell’s 1,200 students packed the gymnasium.

I remember walking into economics class the next morning and walking out soon thereafter, unable to hear what the professor was saying.

But my favorite Springsteen moment took place not in a concert hall, but more than 30 years ago in the apartment of a friend.

Greg Kot and I were a couple of guys from Chicago’s suburbs who started work at a newspaper in Davenport, Iowa, on the same night in June 1978. Kot knew then that he wanted to write about rock-and-roll for the Chicago Tribune. He’s done that now for two decades, along with authoring a couple of books and co-hosting a syndicated radio show.

Springsteen’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town” had released a couple of weeks before we arrived at the Quad-City Times and Kot insisted I come over after our night shift to hear the album.

I straddled a turned-around chair as he placed the record on the turntable, cranked up the volume and watched my face as I sat stunned by the power of the music and mesmerized by the lyrics.

Thirty-plus years later, “Darkness” is still my favorite Springsteen album.

The satellite radio station featuring Springsteen’s music is pre-programmed in my car.

Springsteen is on the cover of AARP’s magazine and I’m old enough to find it in my mailbox.

Where has the time gone?

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

Honor is due.

They are old, the youngest in their early 80s, their faces etched with evidence of the decades.
They walk slowly, some leaning on canes and walkers; others make their way in wheelchairs.
What memories come to mind as they approach the World War II Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.?
They are the core of “the greatest generation,” which fought in Europe, the Pacific and other remote locales.
And we are losing them at an increasingly rapid rate.
The Veterans Administration estimates that by Sept. 30 this year, there will be slightly more than 2 million living veterans of World War II (including my favorite, an 83-year-old Navy veteran living north of Chicago), roughly 280,000 fewer than a year ago.

Honor is due.

When the light is right, the faces stare at you out of the granite wall at the Korean War Memorial.
On a cold, wet night, the statues of 19 weary troops returning from a patrol are particularly eerie.
A former colleague who fought in Korea often complained that veterans of that war were forgotten, coming as it did five years after the end of World War II.
Korean War veterans might be considered the kid brothers and sisters of the World War II veterans (though many also fought in that conflict).
As of last Veterans Day, there were an estimated 2.3 million living veterans of the Korean War.

Honor is due.

Vietnam was in large measure the baby boomers war.
Graying now, its veterans approach the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (aka “The Wall”) in reverence, some shielding their eyes with their hands, lest they be seen shedding tears for comrades (and perhaps their own youth) lost.
They leave memorabilia at the base of the wall, such items as combat medals, unit patches, old photographs and messages written to the dead.
An estimated 8.7 million men and women served in the U.S. military from 1964-1973 (with 3.4 million deployed to Southeast Asia) and at last count 7.1 million were living.

Honor is due.

At the time of Operation Desert Shield before the Gulf War and Operation Desert Storm during the fighting, an estimated 2.32 million men and women served in the armed forces (694,000 of whom were deployed to the Gulf region).
Of these, 2.26 million are among the ranks of living veterans.

Honor is due.

There are more than 23 million living veterans of the U.S. armed services, including more than 17 million who served during war times.

There are an estimated 1.45 million men and women currently on active duty and nearly 850,000 in the reserves.
More than 200,000 currently are deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan).
In time, they will finish their service and join the ranks of veterans.

The veterans of Vietnam War came home to a country that often seemed unwilling to treat the troops as an instrument of policy, not policy itself.
The veterans of the Gulf War returned to a welcome home not experienced by Vietnam vets.
Americans were eager to celebrate a victory achieved in a short period of time, as compared with the divisiveness and casualties of several years combat in Southeast Asia.
(Of course, what constitutes a “win” or a “loss” is highly subjective.)
The veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are coming home to a country that more easily separates its feelings for the troops from its opinions about policy.
This is evident in the efforts by numerous states to ensure educational and employment opportunities for veterans, in Congressional approval of a “new” GI Bill,” recognition by the federal government and military (although some would say belatedly) that the traumas of war are not left on the battlefield and greater attention paid to the stresses experienced by military families.

Honor is due.

There is no national memorial in Washington, D.C., to the veterans of World War I.
The last living American veteran of “the war to end all wars” is 108-year-old Frank Buckles of West Virginia. Buckles is the focal point of legislation that would clean up and expand an existing monument on the National Mall to the World War I veterans, giving them their due alongside those remembering the sacrifices of World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

If you are a veteran or related to one and interested in reunions with former comrades in uniform, check out: http://www.reunionsmag.com/futurereunions/upcoming_military.htm

Census bureau employees, such as this one, gather federal data.

Editor's Note: Update – According to the Census Bureau numbers released today, the 2008 poverty rate was 13.2 percent, up from 12.5 the previous year. The number of people living in poverty in 2008 was 39.8 million, up 2.6 million from the year before.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

On Thursday morning, the Census Bureau will release data expected to show a “statistically significant” increase in the national poverty rate, the percentage of Americans living below the government poverty line.

Based on an Associated Press interview with a Commerce Department official, the expectation is that there will have been nearly 39 million Americans living below the poverty line in 2008 – an increase of more than 1.5 million from the year before – pushing the poverty rate up to at least 12.7 percent, if not higher.

In reality, that number and that rate are something of a fraud.

In the first decade of the 21st Century, the U.S. government still determines who is poor with a formula created in 1963-64 using data from 1955.

1955?

Ike (Dwight David Eisenhower) was President. The Rev. Martin Luther King was led a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California. The Brooklyn Dodgers – yes, Brooklyn – beat the New York Yankees in the World Series.

That formula is based on the percentage of household income a family of four in 1955 spent for food – on a diet “designed for temporary or emergency use when funds are low” – multiplied by three to account for one-third of household income. The Consumer Price Index is used to adjust the line upward annually.

How did we get here?

Mollie Orshansky.

Mollie, an expert in economics and statistics, was working for the Social Security Administration as a Social Science Research Analyst when she used Agriculture Department data from 1955 to devise an equation to measure poverty, later adopted by the administration of President Lyndon Baines Johnson for its “war on poverty.”

The line then was set at $2,442 for that family of four. A separate formula gave the rural poor less than the urban poor, but that index eventually went away.

What’s changed?

Needless to say, “that” America no longer exists.

In 2009, the poverty line is set at a household income of $22,050 for a family of two adults and two children and $10,830 for a single adult under age 65.

In 1955, Americans spent about one-third of their household income on food.

Today’s it’s one-seventh.

We spend a greater percentage of our money on health care. (Relevant to ongoing debate over health care reform: More than 16 percent of the nation’s economic activity goes to health care. That figure has been rising steadily.  As of a couple of years ago, lower-income families spent an estimated 16 percent of household income on health care; higher-income families 3-5 percent and Americans on average 7 percent. For those 65 and older, health care consumed an average of nearly 13 percent of household income.)

We spend more for energy (18 percent of household income on transportation alone; aside from heating and cooling our homes and operating factories and offices).

We spend more on housing (almost one-third of household income).

We spend on child care (a concept that barely existed in 1955, when it was assumed most mothers stayed at home).

The existing “one size fits (almost) all” formula does not account for differences in the cost-of-living between various regions or between big cities vs. small towns.

Critics maintain that by failing to include various forms of public assistance payments received by low-income people, the extent of poverty is over-stated. If the value of food stamps and other programs were counted as income at the current poverty level, many people would no longer be classified as poor.

So why not change the formula? Like anything else involving government, once it gets rooted, it’s hard to remove.

If you change the formula and move the line up, the number and percentage of people nationally classified as poor will go up. “Nobody wants to see that happen on their watch,” Debra Johnson, editor at the Institute for Research on Poverty, based at the University of Wisconsin, told me several months ago. Some cities, counties, states and congressional districts could see increases in their percentage of poor that would vault them ahead of others in this undesirable category.

By most estimates the federal government has spent at least several trillion dollars combating poverty over the past four-plus decades and where there’s federal money there are politicians who don’t want to see their pork sliced or pulled.

Who is pushing for change?

Members of Congress have introduced bills.

The mayor of New York ordered his city to devise its own formula and wound up with a baseline income of close to $50,000 for a family of four, more than twice the current national guideline.

Think tanks have issued reports.

Of particular note, the National Academy of Sciences, which brings together the smartest of the smart, has devised a formula that fits today’s America.

The AP reports that if you use the alternative formula proposed by the Academy, the poverty rate in 2007 was 15.3 percent, not 12.5 percent. The rate for Americans age 65 and older would have been 18.6 percent, not 9.7 percent. Some demographic groups would register a decline in their poverty rate. Some regions would experience an increase, others a decrease. Taking public assistance payments and other forms of federal aid into consideration might change who is eligible for such programs as Medicaid.

You would think that when discussing spending tax dollars on programs to help those in need, you would want to have the most accurate gauge possible.

That means using a formula that makes sense for today, not nearly 55 years ago.

It’s time to move that line.

Editor’s note: At 12:00pm  ET tomorrow, President Obama will go to a high school in Arlington, Va., to deliver a back-to-school speech to the nation’s students. The White House plans to release the speech online today.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

You frequently hear claims that the United States has the best health care system in the world, despite data that suggest otherwise.

You never hear claims that the United States has the best school system in the world, because of data that suggest otherwise.

In fact, you never (okay, almost never) hear anything good about public education in this country, at least not until the subject is college or university.

Have the public schools been talked down to the point where broad-based success (rather than the individual student, school or district) is impossible – a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy?

Americans often say they distrust Congress and the whole lot of them should be thrown out – but then go ahead and re-elect their own representative.

Well, something like that goes on when the topic is public education.

In the most recent edition of an annual poll by the educators association Phi Delta Kappa International and Gallup more than half of those responding graded their local schools with an A or a B but gave the nation’s schools overall significantly lower marks, with fewer than one in five awarding an A or B. "This continues a long-standing difference, suggesting that Americans like the schools they know but are much less positive about public education in general," a review of the poll observed.

"The reasons for this disconnect are simple," Gerald Bracey, a Phi Delta Kappa columnist and author of Education Hell: Rhetoric vs. Reality, told eSchool News. "Americans never hear anything positive about the nation's schools and haven't since the years just before Sputnik in 1957." Bracey cited not only the news media and education advocacy groups for the bad-mouthing, but also politicians, up to and including the White House. "On the other hand," Bracey said, "parents use other sources and resources for information about their local schools: teachers, administrators, friends, neighbors, newsletters, PTAs, and their kids themselves; and they're in a much better position to observe what's actually happening in American schools."

Education Secy. Arne Duncan has his doubts. “Too many people don’t understand how bad their own schools are. They always think it’s somebody else’s kid who’s not being educated. They don’t understand that it’s their own kid who’s being short-changed. That’s part of our challenge. How do you awaken the public to believe that your own kid isn’t getting what they need and you don’t know it. If they would wake up, they could be part of the change. We need to wake them up,” Duncan said in an interview with Phi Delta Kappa’s magazine.

Waking them up may be difficult. The latest CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll, conducted at the end of August, found education tied for fourth as the most important issue facing the country, tied with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at 8 percent, but trailing the economy (41 percent), health care (20 percent) and the deficit (15 percent) percent. Remove the economy from the list and education still ranks fourth.

As it orbited overhead in 1957, the Soviet satellite called Sputnik scared the daylights out of Americans.

The American education world’s version of Sputnik came in 1983, when a blue-ribbon panel appointed by President Ronald Reagan issued a report titled “A Nation at Risk.”

The first paragraph sounded an alarm: “We report to the American people that while we can take justifiable pride in what our schools and colleges have historically accomplished and contributed to the United States and the well-being of its people, the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”

The second paragraph warned: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have even squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge. Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.”

A year ago, the only teacher on the panel defended that strong language. "Any reasonable teacher should have understood at the time — and I did — that we need to tighten up that belt. We have to do something," Jay Sommers, a former National Teacher of the Year, told USA Today.

Something has been done, a series of reforms that led up to the No Child Left Behind act, a signature piece of legislation from the administration of George W. Bush, which, with the best of intentions, put an emphasis on basic reading and math skills, judging the effectiveness of schools through test data.

Of course, as anyone in the news business knows, the initial headline gets more attention than the follow-up later. So it was several years later when an internal analysis by the federal government determined that some data in “A Nation at Risk” had been misinterpreted, that things weren’t nearly as bad as the report stated, that in fact there were measurements showing improvement.

So what is the state of public education in 2009? To hear some folks talk, public schools are a disaster to be avoided. But has public education been talked down more than it deserves?

Consider this from UCLA Professor Michael Rose: "God knows, there is a lot wrong with our schools. But the scope and sweep of the negative public talk is what concerns me, for it excludes the powerful, challenging work done in schools day by day across the country, and it limits profoundly the vocabulary and imagery available to us, constrains the way we frame problems, blinkers our imagination. This kind of talk fosters neither critique nor analysis but rather a grand dismissiveness of despair."

Rose told me he first wrote those words 15 years ago. I told him they sound as true now as they did then.

Census Bureau data of note:

56 million

The projected number of students to be enrolled in the nation’s elementary through high schools (grades K-12) this fall.

11 percent

Projected percentage of elementary through high school students enrolled in private schools this fall.

98,793

Number of public schools in 2006-07. In 2007-08, there were 28,218 private schools.

3,970

The number of public charter schools nationwide in 2006-07. These schools enrolled 1.2 million students.

Sen. Arlen Specter, left, answers questions Tuesday during a forum in Lebanon, Pennsylvania.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

If we have learned – or been reminded – of one thing during the debate over health care reform it is this: Democracy can be messy, noisy, loud, raucous, rude and crude, barely resembling the stereotype of the civilized New England village town hall as depicted in Norman Rockwell’s painting titled “Freedom of Speech.”

Of course, as Winston Churchill so famously offered: “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”

One of the guys in the often-entertaining “Barbershop” segment on National Public Radio’s “Tell Me More” program found a visual metaphor for some of the town hall gatherings in the 1999 film “Fight Club.”

Given the apathy the American people display on so many issues that may not be an entirely bad thing, though.

Remember the line in Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address about a “government of the people, by the people, for the people”?

Well, a lot of people turning up at these town hall meetings feel that they have no say in how they’re governed. (Given the abysmal rate of turnout for elections in this country, maybe a Congressman will refuse to take questions from people who didn’t vote.) This is their chance to tell the “hired help” in Washington how they feel, to look that person in the eye and have some version of a conversation.

“Whether these crowds are representative of America is one question perhaps best answered by polls. But they are certainly representative of a particular slice of America, a group of Americans who, justified or not, are distraught by the country's direction, are distrustful of the Obama administration, and see themselves losing control over their lives and being forced to cede that control to the federal government,” Kent Garber observed in U.S. News & World Report.

“The recession, their comments suggest, is partly responsible for the intensity of their emotions. The evaporation of money has created a feeling, voiced repeatedly at this meeting, that the code by which many Americans live—work hard, get ahead—is not respected by Washington, which they see as spending wastefully.”

Peggy Noonan suggested in The Wall Street Journal that the complicated language in the health care legislation is an important factor. “And when normal people don't know what the words mean, they don't say to themselves, "I may not understand, but my trusty government surely does, and will treat me and mine with respect." They think, "I can't get what these people are talking about. They must be trying to get one past me. So I'll vote no,”" Noonan wrote.

There have been other occasions when public debate was heated.

Consider Leonard Zeskind’s column titled “On health care hearings, a little perspective, please.”

“Let's begin with the "the screamers are so uncivil they are ruining the chance for a public discussion" thesis. It does not take all that much memory to recall the time when Democratic and Republican politicians supporting the Vietnam War were met with just the kind of loud and impolite behavior we see in these town halls meetings today. In fact, the Vietnam War protests were more raucous. While the political differences between war protestors and health care opponents are real, telling people to sit down and shut up and talk to each other like they were in a schoolhouse library did not have any effect back then. And we should not expect such imprecations to "civility" to have any effect now. In fact, such calls for calm are more than likely to have the opposite effect,” Zeskind wrote.

Daniel Rodriguez had this caution for supporters of President Obama’s proposals in a Los Angeles Times column: “Don't get too outraged, those of you who are looking down your noses at those unreasonable, misinformed anti-healthcare-reform town hallers. No matter what particular clan, tribe or party you belong to, you can't really disown them any more than you can your own grandmother. You may not agree with them, but their brand of hotheaded, self-righteous, obnoxious, stick-it-to-the-manism is as American as apple pie.”

Oh, by the way, if you think the health care bill is controversial and hefty at 1,000-plus pages, wait until the climate change legislation passed by the House comes up for Senate consideration. That bill, H.R. 2454 checks in at more than 1,400 pages. And if you think there has been heat over health care reform, just think about what’s coming on a bill whose stated purpose is “To create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy.” It’s been simmering on a back burner but take my word, this one’s going to boil over.

Author’s note: This blog contains more metaphors than considered healthy.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

I confess to not having read the entire 1,000 pages-plus that make up the bill at the base of the current debate, a proposal being torn apart and rebuilt by three committees in the House and two in the Senate in a time-honored and time-consuming process often derisively referred to as “sausage-making.”

Not to mention the debate ongoing in often raucous online and public forums.

As Dr. Bernadine Healey cautioned in U.S. News & World Report, “Reading H.R. 3200 is not like curling up with Harry Potter. “ It certainly is not, though for some people the current debate seems to pit good vs. evil (which is left to the individual). If you’ve never read a piece of legislation, take a gander at this heavyweight.

The length and complexity of this bill apparently is taxing the hired help in Washington, D.C., as well.

I receive dozens of pieces of mail on health care daily from think tanks, newspapers, blogs and groups with a variety of interests and perspectives on the subject. I read as many of these as I can but, you know, there is other news of import (the economy, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the prospects for peace in the Middle East, education and a return of the flu).

I’ll pass on metaphoric reference to the legislative process resembling a meat grinder in favor of what one author called “the dance of legislation.” In this case, the dance resembles the mosh pit at a head-banging hardcore rock concert more than the slow, precise movements of a waltz.

Eventually – perhaps – the House and Senate each will produce a bill.

Then comes the slam dance known as a conference committee, where the heavyweights from the two sides of Capitol Hill attempt to produce a single measure to be taken back to the full House and Senate and – if approved – sent to the President.

Little happens on Capitol Hill without a dollar tag attached and if money is the mother’s milk of politics when it comes to health care issues the flow is unending and quite rich.

A former colleague with a wicked sense of humor offered this thought: “I still like the idea of making Congressmen wear suits with the names of all of their commercial contributors on them. NASCAR democracy!!” Considering all of the money from all of the sources to all of the members of Congress, especially those writing the legislation – and we’re talking about millions of dollars here – that’s not a bad idea.

If you want to read up on all of this lobbying largesse, let me recommend two sources: The Sunlight Foundation and OpenSecrets.org, the Center for Responsive Politics.

Continuing with the theme of comparisons, trying to keep up with minutia in the health care story leaves me feeling like Bogie dragging “The African Queen” through the high water and marsh.

Okay, that may be a bit beyond exaggeration but my bar for a complicated story is the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Keeping track of the religious and ethnic factions and the geography they occupied as that patchwork nation broke apart became my standard for a story that required effort to comprehend.

Then came Iraq and shifting alliances among the Shi’a, Sunnis and Kurds as the U.S. and allied forces struggled to meet a mission of bringing some semblance of democratic government to a land fractured along religious, ethnic and tribal lines.

Well, the devilish details in health care reform makes Yugoslavia and Iraq resemble a child’s jig-saw puzzle.

The House and Senate are in recess.

That gives the Congressmen and Senators the better part of a month to put their feet up on the sofa or dig them into the sand and read the 1,000 or so pages . . . when they’re not spending quality time in quiet conversation with their constituents.

Or taking a long flight out of the country. The 1,000 pages are just the thing to pass a long plane flight to another country.

Yes, it’s pretty thick stuff but – and here we go again – the sausage being made will be served to all of us so it’s best we know what’s on our plate . . . and how it got there.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

Sitting on the edge of the bed in my parents’ bedroom upstairs.

That’s where I watched the Apollo 11 astronauts step onto the moon.

If you are of a certain age, you remember where you were on July 20, 1969.

I remember when a television would be wheeled into my grade school classrooms so that we could watch the launch of the Mercury or Gemini missions and later the splashdown and recovery of the astronauts by Navy divers.

I remember a plastic space helmet and wanting to be John Glenn aboard “Friendship 7,” the third Mercury mission and the first to orbit the earth.

By July 16, 1969, when Apollo 11 launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the public was still a ways off from becoming inattentive to the space program.

Apollo 11 was an occasion for global fascination and for an America mired in a divisive jungle war thousands of miles away, a source of national pride.

The mission was the product of years of behind-the-scenes science and engineering trial-and-error.

In the early years of the space program, there were rockets that did not launch properly.

There was a fire that killed three astronauts in their capsule as they trained for the Apollo 11 mission.

But the successes were cheered from the White House to Main Street to school classrooms across the land.

Forty years later, the success of Apollo 11 stands as a testament to American ingenuity and a marker from a period of history known as the “Cold War.”

"The Apollo program is not replicable," Dr. John M. Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, wrote in Space News. "It was a product of a specific time in history, as the Soviet Union and the United States were using space firsts as a surrogate battlefield for their global geopolitical competition. It was definitely not part of a societal commitment to space exploration and development."

The mission to the moon was outlined by a young President to a nation fascinated with their relatively young leader and his vision of a “New Frontier.”

Recall the words of President John F. Kennedy before a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961: “First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”

Eight years later, Sid Liebergot was an electrical, environmental and communications officer in mission control for the Apollo 11 mission.

“We were young, and we were fearless and, after all, nobody had ever told us young engineers that we couldn’t successfully land humans on another planet. So we did it,” Liebergot said.

Could America do something on this scale again?

America today is different in so many ways.

Public enthusiasm for the space program is not what it was then.

The missions most remembered since the landing on the moon probably are Apollo 13, which put the phrase “Houston we have a problem” into the public lexicon, and the tragedies of the shuttles Challenger and Columbia.

That is a shame, because much has been accomplished in four decades in understanding how man (and woman) function in space and in unmanned missions to planets and world’s beyond our moon.

Indeed, there is debate within the scientific community over the value of manned space flight compared with the abilities of robots and probes to explore our universe.

Last November I wrote in this space about a former colleague’s lament that – contrary to the expectations of our early 1960s childhood – space travel for the average man and woman would not be realized in our lifetimes.

In response to that blog, “Tammy” from Louisiana commented, “The opportunities space has for us are endless, the knowledge is endless, and I fear we as a nation forget how amazing this all still is sometimes.”

Indeed, advocates of space exploration worry that in a time of earthly concerns what lies beyond the world we know will become an afterthought.

And that would be too bad, for as the poet Robert Browning said, “Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp. Or what's a heaven for?”

Author’s note: There are a lot of websites devoted to the Apollo 11 mission. Two, in particular, caught my attention. Popular Mechanics reveals the “untold story” of Apollo 11 here and go to www.wechoosethemoon.org and click on “follow the mission on Twitter” for a combination of 1969 history and 2009 technology.

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

“No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.” - Barbara Ehrenreich

"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.” – John F. Kennedy

“I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.” - Abraham Lincoln

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.” – Edward R. Murrow

“The ultimate determinant in the struggle now going on for the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas-a trial of spiritual resolve: the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish and the ideals to which we are dedicated.” – Ronald Reagan

“Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.” – Margaret Chase Smith

“When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.” - Adlai Stevenson

“If you want a symbolic gesture, don't burn the flag; wash it.” – Norman Thomas

“You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong no matter who does it or who says it.” – Malcolm X

I’ll miss Eve’s picnics. They were unique. They were so . . . American, in a days-gone-by fashion.

The quotes I read last year prompted discussion that you can continue this Fourth of July. Take a moment to ask yourself: What does it mean to be an American? What does it mean to be patriotic?

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.

Just as the exterminator says that if you turn on the light and see one scurry for the darkness there are many, many more you don’t see, for every James W. von Brunn that makes headlines, there are many, many more not in the public eye.

The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that more than 900 organized hate groups exist in this country (and provides a map identifying their locations).

Leonard Zeskind, whom I first encountered 25 years ago and is one of the most respected researchers of the hate groups, told Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s “The Situation Room” that some 30,000 Americans are “hard core” members and another 250,000 could be classified as supporters.

Zeskind, who is not given to hyperbole, has received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant for his more than three decades tracking hate groups and is author of the recently-published book “Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream.”

“The most important thing is for us not to dismiss the problem of the white nationalist movements in between shootings,” Zeskind told Blitzer. “We should not dismiss these things when they’re not killing. It seems to me that one of the few times we talk about this is when the killings are going on. We should pay attention to it and people should be educated about it.”

More recently than Jews and blacks, Arabs and Muslims in this country have come in for attention from the hate-mongers.

A few hours after the shooting I received an e-mail from my friend Arsalan Iftikhar, a human rights attorney and creator of www.themuslimguy.com.

Iftikhar recalled that in the immediate aftermath of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City there were suggestions on talk radio that the blast had to be the work of Arab or Muslim terrorists.

It wasn’t (despite what conspiracy theorists continue to insist) and neither was the Holocaust museum shooting, despite what some people might have wondered when they heard early reports about an attack on a Jewish target.

Iftikhar suggested on his Facebook page that “there should now be commissioned a bronze statue of Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns to sit adjacent to The Holocaust Museum within our city to commemorate the tragedy of today.”

A less generous sampling of opinion can be found at this popular forum for white nationalists.

“I hope it's a Muslim. I hope it's a Muslim. The last thing we need is some idiot white going out and wreaking havoc,” someone using the handle “Swiss Cheese” (perhaps a reference to holes in this person’s thinking), listed as being from Indiana, posted at 1.34 p.m.

Six minutes later, VEB1958 asked, “Have we heard a description yet? Good lord I hope its not a damn white that did that crap...ugh.”

“Pure Noble Bloodline” echoed, “The more I see this on the news the more I hope it is a muslim and not a WN that they will label as a crazed Nazi.”

The tone changed slightly once the alleged shooter was identified as von Brunn, an 88-year-old white male with a long history in the white nationalist movement.

“Well, obviously these kind of actions never do us any good and only play into the hands of our opponents. I'm not quite sure what this man thought he was going to accomplish by spraying the museum with bullets, certainly he should have known that this would be splashed all over the news,” offered “Volkish.”

“Fascist Next Door” was worried. “This isn't good for our cause. This is bound to grow arms and legs for sure...”

Which brings us to Janet Langhart.

Langhart, who is African-American raised Baptist, is married to former Defense Secretary and Senator from Maine William Cohen, who is white and the offspring of an inter-faith (Protestant and Jewish) marriage.

She has been a television journalist, an author (“My Life in Two Americas: From Rage to Reason” and “Love in Black and White: A Memoir of Race, Religion, and Romance”), founder of Langhart Communications and most recently – and notably – the playwright of “Anne and Emmett,” an imaginary conversation between Holocaust victim Anne Frank, who died at age 15 in a Nazi concentration camp, and Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American from Chicago lynched in 1955 in Mississippi.

Cohen had arrived at the Holocaust museum moments before the shooting and heard the gunshots and Langhart was en route, to oversee a rehearsal of the play, which was to have been performed that night at the museum.

Speaking emotionally to Blitzer, with her husband at her side, Langhart noted that in Europe, several nations have made Holocaust denial a crime.

“Yet here in America – and I love this country and I love our freedom . . . as a journalist, the First Amendment is important to me . . . But what do we do about people like this who spread that kind of hate. Because it all begins with a word, then it’s a gun and then it’s somebody dead. What do we do?. . . How do we reconcile this?” Langhart asked.

A very good question. Anyone have an answer?

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.

What constitutes being thrown under the bus, anyway?

Suggestions of U.S. leniency or accommodation toward Iran or Syria qualify, as does pressure on Israel to curtail settlement activity in the West Bank and ease restrictions on movement by Palestinians. And this recent statement by a State Dept. official: "Universal adherence to the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Tready) itself – including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea – also remains a fundamental objective of the United States” (in effect removing the curtain from in front of Israel’s not-so-secret nuclear weapons program) set off alarm bells.

Among the widely circulated items is a column by Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post. “Arctic winds are blowing into Jerusalem from Washington these days,” Glick forecast. “As Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's May 18 visit to Washington fast approaches, the Obama administration is ratcheting up its anti-Israel rhetoric and working feverishly to force Israel into a corner.”

Glick was referring, at least in part, to Vice President Joe Biden’s remarks this month’s AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) conference in Washington. Ironically, the theme of the AIPAC meeting was “Relationships Matter.”

Biden first offered the carrot: “But in the midst of change, with all the change you will hear about, there is one enduring, essential principle that will not change; and that is our commitment to the peace and security of the state of Israel. That is not negotiable. That is not a matter of change. That is something to be reinforced and made clear. It seems almost unnecessary to state it, but I want the word to go forth in here that no one should mistake it.”

Later came a stick, of sorts: "But Israel has to work towards a two-state solution. You're not going to like my saying this, but not build more settlements, dismantle existing outposts, and allow the Palestinians freedom of movement based on their first actions - its access to economic opportunity and increased security responsibility. This is a "show me" deal - not based on faith - show me.”

The Obama White House is hardly the first to seek a halt to expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Over the years officials representing previous administrations termed the settlements “a complicating factor,” “obstacles to peace” and “illegal.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the AIPAC meeting by satellite. He did not use the magic phrase “two-state solution” in discussing the future of the Palestinians, but did say, "We are prepared to resume negotiations without any preconditions." Israeli President Shimon Peres, who did speak in person, said that Netanyahu would abide by the decisions of previous Israeli governments, which included the two-state solution, though to what extent is not clear.

President Obama supports Palestinian aspirations. So did his predecessor. George W. Bush was the first President to call publicly for creation of a Palestinian state and he followed Bill Clinton, who as President said that ”there can be no genuine resolution to the conflict without a sovereign, viable, Palestinian state that accommodates Israeli's security requirements and the demographic realities.”

Another piece e-mailed in volume is a column by Melanie Phillips in the British newspaper The Spectator. To be accurate, what Phillips wrote was that “ . . . Obama is attempting to throw Israel under the Islamist bus, . . .”

“It is not the aggressor here but the victim of aggression that American is now choosing to beat up,” Phillips said. After referring to controversies about candidate Obama’s associations she then referred to “the cabal of Israel-bashers, appeasers and Jew-haters he appointed to his administration, with a few useful idiots thrown in for plausible deniability.” I’m not sure in which of those categories she places Vice President Biden.

Author Joel C. Rosenberg (“The Last Jihad” his best-known work) also was wary. “The mutually warm words of appreciation for 61 years of U.S.-Israel relations notwithstanding, a train wreck is coming between the Netanyahu administration and the Obama administration over Iran and the "peace process." I pray it can be avoided, but at this point Netanyahu and his team understand the apocalyptic death cult they are facing in Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, and President Obama and his team do not. Netanyahu is preparing to take action to defend Israel and the world from the nightmare of a nuclear armed Iran, and Obama is not,” Rosenberg wrote on his blog after the AIPAC meeting.

Americans for Peace Now took a different tack in an open letter to the President: “As you face the opposition, please keep in mind that our support for your Mideast agenda represents a majority view both in Israel and among Israel's friends in the United States. American Jews voted for you overwhelmingly last November. Most American Jews and most Israeli citizens support the two-state solution that your administration is diligently pursuing. We are confident that Americans – Jews and non-Jews alike – increasingly recognize that Mideast peace is a key U.S. national security interest.”

J Street, a relatively new player in Washington, describes itself as “the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement.” Its executive director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, wrote in The Forward, a newspaper focusing on Jewish affairs, that, “American Jewish organizations and leaders can choose to act as if it’s still the 1960s, with Israel fighting for physical survival and struggling to make the desert bloom. Or we can appreciate that it’s now the 21st century and that Israel boasts the dominant military in the region and a European standard of living. In 2009, we don’t risk Israel’s survival when we question whether the decisions Israelis are making run counter to their own interests, or to America’s, or if we engage in debate here that is at least as open and broad as in Israel itself.”

Elliott Abrams, whose portfolio as a national security adviser during the George W. Bush administration included the Middle East, offered advice about how to read signals from the Obama-Netanyahu meeting. “It's unlikely that we'll know quickly whether they hit it off,” Abrams wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “The Israelis will almost certainly make this claim within seconds after the meeting ends, and will adduce every possible piece of evidence. Mr. Obama smiled; he put his arm on Mr. Netanyahu's shoulder; his body language was friendly; his tie had positive colors.”

Abrams also offered this guidance: “The White House leaks will be more interesting, for the staff may want to keep Mr. Netanyahu nervous; we'll have to watch what favored journalists are told about the chemistry in the days after the visit. We should not expect to hear the kind of crack that French President Nicolas Sarkozy apparently made to journalists after meeting the president (that Mr. Obama was "not always at his best when it comes to decisions and efficiency"), as that does not appear to be the Obama style. If he makes an exception for Mr. Netanyahu and has the staff trash the prime minister to the media, we'll know the two men decided to loathe each other.”

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.”

At his worst, Moyers lay down on the floor of a crack house in Atlanta, a short drive from work, and wished to die. He already had been through rehab three times and still could not shake his addiction to crack cocaine.

About that day nearly 15 years ago, Moyers wrote, “I folded my arms over my chest, longing for comfort, for peace. I was so sick. So sick and tired of it all. In that moment I realized the hopelessness of my situation, and in a sudden, brief flash of clarity, I asked myself: Now what? I stared at the filthy wood floor littered with half-empty beer cans, cigarette butts, and used syringes. The answer wasn't here in this room anymore. It was all over. I was done.”

Rescue came when an intervention team hired by his parents removed him from the crack house and put him into a van, where the son found himself face-to-face with his father, despairing of his eldest’s addiction.

A fourth stint in rehab took hold. Moyers today is a vice president at Hazelden, the well-known addiction treatment center in Minnesota. He travels frequently, talking about the reality of addiction.

According to federal statistics gathered in 2007, an estimated 19.9 million Americans aged 12 or older reported using illicit drugs within the month prior to the survey.

Americans are, their government says, the world’s largest consumers of cocaine (shipped from Colombia via Mexico and the Caribbean), Colombian heroin and Mexican heroin and marijuana. Americans also are classified as major consumers of imported ecstasy and Mexican methamphetamines and minor consumers of Southeast Asian heroin. Of course, not everything is imported. Americans also produce domestic marijuana, depressants, stimulants, hallucinogens and methamphetamine.

More than $40 billion in federal, state and local dollars are spent annually, in what sometimes appears to be a futile effort to keep supply from meeting demand. Even with progress among young people touted by the feds arrests in the U.S. this year are expected to exceed 1.8 million.

(Note: the phrase “war on drugs,” was introduced by President Richard Nixon in June of 1971, a play on the “war on poverty” waged by his predecessor, President Lyndon Baines Johnson.)

A group of former Latin American presidents has called on President Obama to rethink America’s strategy, which they say contributes to the crime, corruption and instability in their region. (Their criticism appeared in a report from the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy.) The leaders wrote in The Wall Street Journal that: “In order to drastically reduce the harm caused by narcotics, the long-term solution is to reduce demand for drugs in the main consumer countries. To move in this direction, it is essential to differentiate among illicit substances according to the harm they inflict on people’s health, and the harm drugs cause to the social fabric. In this spirit, we propose a paradigm shift in drug policies based on three guiding principles: Reduce the harm caused by drugs, decrease drug consumption through education, and aggressively combat organized crime. To translate this new paradigm into action we must start by changing the status of addicts from drug buyers in the illegal market to patients cared for by the public health system.”

Moyers agrees that a different approach is needed.

“The issue is fundamentally about demand,” he tells me. “For too long America's "war on drugs" has targeted the production and distribution of illegal drugs. So we keep doing the same thing over and over: spraying cocoa fields in Columbia, setting fire to poppy supplies in Afghanistan, chopping down marijuana crops in Arizona, raiding crack houses in Atlanta and busting up meth labs in Idaho. And what do we get? Nothing has changed. Nothing. Just look at the street fights between drug cartels in Mexico or the Taliban's resurgence through the production of opium. The same crack houses are up and running [in Atlanta] where I hung out 15 years ago. Cocaine is half the price it was in 1980. Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result, is called insanity and insanity is what this drug war is all about. The most effective way to reduce the production and flow of drugs into America is to reduce the consumers' demand for them, and the most effective way to reduce that demand is by getting people like me to stop using them.”

(Note: Whether the price of cocaine has risen or fallen seems to depend on the time frame you use.)

Don’t misunderstand, Moyers is not opposed to attacking the supply side.

“There is nothing wrong with seizing illegal drugs and locking up drug dealers, so the money spent on the war on drugs is not completely wasted. But it is money poured into a bottomless pit as long as more resources are not committed to prevention, treatment and research. About two-thirds of the federal drug budget goes to intervention and tough law enforcement. We need to shift that to 50-50,” he says.

Moyers is hopeful that the Obama administration will change the current approach.

“There are signs President Obama understands that the war on drugs is tantamount to a war against people who are users and abusers, most of whom are addicted and need help instead of just punishment. So while the jury is still out, I am hopeful. If I had five minutes with Mr. Obama I would say this: "Take a chance and do what no other president has done in the past 40 years: shift from a primary focus on the supply and instead use those additional resources on effective, evidence-based prevention and treatment models. Issue a public challenge to addiction treatment providers to develop a standardized benchmark for measuring the success of treatment among various populations. One benchmark for indigent addicts and alcoholics in the public pay system and one for people with private health care insurance. And in the meantime, hold a White House summit on addiction in America, with a focus on the solutions, not the problems,” he says.

As for life as a recovering addict, a husband and father, Moyers takes it “one day at a time.”

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.

Take that term “baby boomer.” An easy majority of the oldest wear it proudly, the survey says, while nearly half of the youngest are less fond of the moniker, about one-third choosing to think of themselves as “Gen X,” referring to the generation born after 1965.

All boomers were not created equally.

“The Oldest Boomers, who were often associated with a rebellious and influential youth culture, are now facing the contrast of growing up in the sixties, and now living through their sixties. . . Now they have reached a new stage of life where their primary careers are winding down, and they are figuring out what they will do when they retire and how to pay for it.,” a recent report from the institute says.

Meanwhile, “The Youngest Boomers, on the other hand, are now middle-age, are at their peak earning years, and have younger children still at home. . . Instead of living in families where their mothers stayed at home to raise the family, they were more likely to be latchkey children,” as women entered the workforce in greater numbers. “Now, as they look to the future, they understand that they very likely will not have a [work-related pension plan] and will need to take more responsibility for their own financial future.”

That’s a heavier load for the younger brothers and sisters.

The oldest boomers are eying the years ahead, as they gray (or hide the gray) and can see retirement (even through the fog of this economy) somewhere out there. They worry about affording health care and remaining productive as they age.

The youngest boomers worry about outliving their retirement savings and having to work longer than they’d like.

On that issue, the oldest boomers see retirement as something at age 66 while the youngest eye age 64. At present, according to the survey, half of the oldest are working full-time while shy of one-in-five has retired. The current economy’s impact on their finances is a major factor in continuing to work, followed by the need to save more for retirement and, for some, simply enjoying work.

Frankly, they’re just not ready.

Asked about their progress in planning for retirement, 15 percent of the oldest boomers said they had no goals, 2 percent had not started, 15 percent admitted being significantly behind where they should be, 29 percent judged themselves to be somewhat behind, 25 percent felt themselves on-track and 13 percent already had retired.

Older and young boomers hold similar attitudes on providing for their family’s needs, maintaining their health, meeting personal needs and contributing to their communities.

But they diverge when asked about whether they are ensuring a steady stream of retirement income, whether they’re providing for their parents needs, whether they’re saving enough for the future and whether they’re planning on living retirement to the fullest; in each case these being greater concerns for older boomers.

As for their health, two-thirds of the youngest boomers think themselves in excellent or very good health, while only half of the oldest could make that statement.

There is one thing on which the oldest (now 63) and youngest (now 45) baby boomers agree: they don’t like getting older.

But in the back of my mind, I hear Jimmy Duarante singing:

Don't you know that it's worth
Every treasure on earth
To be young at heart?
For, as rich as you are,
It's much better by far
To be young at heart
And, if you should survive
To a hundred and five,
Look at all you'll derive
Just by being alive!
Now, here is the best part:
You have a head start
If you are amongst the very young...
At heart

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.

This is a sensitive issue, not only for Americans of Armenian and Turkish descent, but also for U.S. foreign policy. For many of the more than 1 million Armenian-Americans, this is where the rubber of candidate Obama’s campaign promises meets the road of President Obama in the Oval Office.

As a senator and presidential candidate, Barack Obama repeatedly stated that the Armenian genocide is fact – not myth – and that he supported an oft-proposed but narrowly defeated Congressional resolution recognizing the slaughter as “the Armenian genocide.” In a Jan. 19, 2008, campaign statement, candidate Obama said, “As a senator, I strongly support passage of the Armenian Genocide Resolution (H.Res.106 and S.Res.106), and as President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide." Those positions helped Obama win endorsements from Armenian-American organizations and community support measured at more than 80 percent.

But as President, he avoided use of the word “genocide” in front of his hosts during his recent trip to Turkey. “Well, my views are on the record and I have not changed views,” President Obama said during a news conference with Turkish President Abdullah Gul.

That left many Armenian-Americans wanting more. Obama "missed a valuable opportunity to honor his public pledge to recognize the Armenian genocide," Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, told the Los Angeles Times.

To understand the passion of Armenian-Americans on this issue, consider this excerpt from a 2007 article by Michael Crowley in The New Republic: “Most Armenian-Americans are descended from survivors of the slaughter and grew up listening to stories about how the Turks, suspecting the Orthodox Christian Armenians of collaborating with their fellow Orthodox Christian Russians during World War I, led their grandparents on death marches, massacred entire villages, and, in one signature tactic, nailed horseshoes to their victims' feet. . . Turkey's refusal to acknowledge the guilt of their Ottoman forbears infuriates Armenians, leaving them feeling cheated of the sacred status awarded to Jewish Holocaust survivors.”

So Armenian-Americans anticipate April 24 and whether, now that he is in the White House, President Obama will repeat what he has said before about the Armenian genocide.

On that day, “the President has a well-timed opportunity to deliver on the change he promised, to honor the pledges he made and to affirm the U.S. record on the Armenian Genocide,” the Armenian Assembly of America said in a statement. “...we fully expect him to honor his pledge and affirm the historical truth of the Armenian Genocide. We encourage all people of goodwill to help us end the cycle of genocide denial by becoming an Ambassador of Affirmation and send a letter to President Obama," the Assembly’s Executive Director Bryan Ardouny said in the statement.

President Obama will face the community’s expectations yet again if the House of Representatives votes in favor of a resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide, a resolution that has been introduced for several years and was re-introduced in March.

That resolution calls on the President to "accurately characterize the systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as genocide."

The resolution’s primary backer is Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., whose district includes the largest concentration of the nation’s roughly 1.5 million Armenian-Americans.

Crowley’s 2007 article dealt with the historical and diplomatic issues attached to the resolution and the money the Turkish government has spent to hire big-name Washington lobbyists, including former leaders of Congress, to lobby against the resolution.

"The resolution would be insulting to Turkey and would be very poorly received," James H. Holmes, a retired U.S. ambassador who is now president of the American Turkish Council, told McLatchy newspapers. He added that "some very significant commercial opportunities" might be put at risk.

The U.S. government wants to maintain good relations with Turkey for reasons that include U.S. military basing in that country, Iraq as its next-door neighbor and its potential role in the Middle East peace process, as well as those trade considerations.

So keep watch on April 24 or thereabouts as Barack Obama finds himself caught between positions he’s repeated over the years and the challenges he faces as President of the United States.

Crowley, writing in The New Republic a couple of weeks ago, pointed out that it’s one thing to make such statements as a candidate and something altogether different to do so as President of the United States. “But the question is whether Obama reiterates those views in his official capacity. That's what the Armenians have been desperate to see him to. And while there are sound arguments against inflaming the Turkish public with such an act, that is what Obama, as a candidate, explicitly promised he would do,” Crowley wrote.

In 1948, a United Nations convention defined genocide as acts “committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” In 2009, President Obama might have to decide whether this definition fits what happened to the Armenians nearly a century ago.

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.

I collect information about the economy and its impact from around the country, to share with colleagues as we prepare reports for CNN. When we talk about the economy, the forest of bad news cannot be avoided but within it there are trees of, if not good news, at least people coping.

You find people who have lost their jobs and gone back to school to learn new skills for jobs in  promising industries, such as health care. You meet people becoming entrepreneurs, starting their own businesses. Still others have found new jobs, but at lower wages. But there also are a lot of people who have lost jobs and dropped off the economic radar.

My standard for a complicated story used to be the former Yugoslavia. Keeping track of the ethnic and religious divisions in that country required serious study, particularly as that fragile union disintegrated and descended into war. Well, Yugoslavia seems easy compared with the machinations of derivatives and credit default swaps.

So, in these troubled times, where do you go to find wisdom? Maybe we’re making things too complicated.

I offer you the following excerpt from the script of “Being There,” the 1979 movie featuring Peter Sellers as “Chance,” the simple-minded, but well-meaning gardener. In this scene the character whose name is misunderstood to be Chauncey Gardiner is engaged in conversation with the President of the United States and Ben Rand, the wealthy businessman who takes Chance into his home:

President: Do you agree with Ben, Mr. Gardiner? Or do you think we can stimulate growth through temporary incentives?

Chance: As long as the roots are not severed, all is well and all will be well in the garden.

President: In the garden?

Chance: That is correct. In a garden, growth has its season. There is spring and summer, but there is also fall and winter. And then spring and summer again . . .

President: Spring and summer . . . (looking confused for a moment) Yes, I see . . . Fall and winter (smiles at Chance) Yes, indeed.

Rand: (interrupts) I think what my most insightful friend is building up to, Mr. President, is that we welcome the inevitable seasons of nature, yet we are upset by the seasons of our economy.

Chance: Yes. That is correct. There will be growth in the spring.

President: (looking pleased) Well, Mr. Gardiner, I must admit, that is one of the most refreshing and optimistic statements I’ve heard in a very, very long time.
(he rises) I envy your good, solid sense, Mr. Gardiner – that is precisely what we lack on Capitol Hill.
(glances at his watch) I must be going.
(holds out hand to Chance) . . . This visit has been most enlightening . . .

Hey, it makes about as much sense as a lot of what passes for wisdom these days.

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.

Part one of the Census is underway, verifying addresses, a task made easier by the use of hand-held computers with GPS (global positioning satellite) capabilities but also made more complicated by the record numbers of foreclosed homes and displaced residents; the spike in homeless, particularly for families, and people on the move in search of work.

The government takes this stuff seriously. You can be fined $100 for refusing to answer the Census and $500 for deliberately providing false information.

It won’t take you long to respond. The 2010 Census will be short-form only. It will be mailed in mid-March, preparing for April 1, 2010 – Census Day. The head of household will be asked to list the people living there by sex, age, date of birth, race, ethnicity, the relationship of people in the household and how long they’ve lived there.

More detailed information on other subjects – the numbers demographers love to crunch, ranging from income to languages spoken at home – is gathered by the American Community Survey, done annually with a much smaller sample.

It will cost roughly $14 billion to conduct the Census. That includes the hiring of 1.4 million Census workers, about 400,000 this spring and the other million next year.  In a slumping economy, these jobs may be part-time, but they pay wages anywhere from $8-$26 an hour, depending on duties and location.

The Census Bureau is spending $250 million to get its message across, using traditional media, social media and particularly ethnic media. "A year from not, the populace will have seen and heard more ads in national and local media than in any prior census," the Census Bureau's acting director, Thomas Mesenbourg, told a House subcommittee hearing.

The Census wants to convince immigrant communities – particularly Latinos – that they can participate in the Census without worrying that the information will be turned over to immigration authorities. In fact, Census workers take a lifetime pledge not to reveal information and face fines and possible imprisonment if they violate that oath. The more the cooperation from racial and ethnic communities, the less the chance of undercounts that then affect how tax dollars are divided.

A test of bi-lingual Census forms was conducted last year in counties in North Carolina and California that have experienced rapid increases in their Latino populations. The 2000 census counted more than 35 million Hispanics (the official term used by the U.S. government). Latino groups estimate that several million more were missed. In 2007, the most recent year available, the Latino population was estimated almost 45 million. The 2010 Census asks if the respondent is Hispanic, Latino or of Spanish origin, separate from the question asking about race.

In this increasingly multi-cultural America, the Census allows for checking more than one box under race. Still, objections remain, including Iranians who don’t consider themselves Middle-Easterners and African immigrants uncomfortable describing themselves as black.

The gay community has its own complaint; namely, that according to the Census it doesn’t exist.

The Census Bureau, in a statement released March 10, reiterated that because the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) does not recognize same-sex unions sanctioned by states, census takers will mark same-sex couples who live together as "unmarried partners." "This is all about the numbers," bureau spokesperson Cynthia Endo said. "This is not about lifestyle or anything else."

Same-sex couples with no children will not be classified as families. Same-sex couples raising children won’t be classified as families. The Census will list them as being attached to one of the adults.

That means my friends M & D, two men raising two adopted boys, don’t exist as a family. Neither do J and S, raising a daughter J adopted before meeting S. B and M, partners for many years, they’ll be listed as unrelated men who happen to share a house.

When it comes to the Census question about the relationship between people in a household, the Williams Institute, a think tank at the University of California-Los Angeles law school, recommends that gay and lesbian couples designate one partner as the “husband” or “wife” or as an “unmarried partner.”

"I am a sociologist and census data is very important to our existence, and I don't like it when they leave things out, it causes an undercount," says Sharon Raphael, 67, who teaches gerontology at Cal State-Dominguez Hills told the Long Beach, Calif., Press-Telegram. "Certain numbers of us are not out, and when they hide us under these general descriptions ... it just makes us more invisible."

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.

Compared with a similar poll in 2001, public figures are held in less esteem today. Fifty-seven percent in the 2001 poll identified a public figure as being worthy of hero status, but that figure declined to 49 percent in this year’s survey.

On the other hand, the percentages also declined for those identifying a father, mother, sibling, grandparent, other relative or friend as hero material.

So, just what makes a hero? To those answering the question this year:

“Doing what’s right regardless of personal consequences” (89 percent)
“Not giving up until the goal is accomplished” (83 percent)
“Doing more than what other people expect of them” (82 percent)
“Overcoming adversity” (81 percent)
“Staying level-headed in a crisis” (81 percent)

Back in 2001, Jesus Christ finished first, followed by the Rev. King, Colin Powell, President Kennedy and Mother Theresa.

George W. Bush had been president just six months when the July 2001 poll was taken and ranked 19th. Had that poll been taken three months later, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, he might have finished much higher.

McCain was not among those ranked in the 2001 poll. Mother Theresa ranked fifth that year. Powell was third then, 16th now. John Wayne and Michael Jordan, ranked eighth and ninth, respectively, in 2001, have dropped out of the top 20.

Bragging rights in the Clinton household in 2009 go to Secy. of State Hillary Clinton in 12th (one place behind God), while former President Bill Clinton ranked 16th (one place behind the Mahatma Gandhi and two behind both Billy Graham and Franklin Delano Roosevelt).

Oprah slid from 14th in 2001 to 20th in 2009.

That’s what adults thought, but what about today’s youth? Check out the page on heroes from “Teen Ink” magazine online. Take a look at the most popular entries. Where adults were less likely to name a relative, many of these teens honor their parents, grandparents and friends. Some of the brief essays are quite touching.

The Harris Poll above is made up of well-known names. You won’t find Jorge Munoz, Carolyn Manning and Roy Foster among them, but by any standard, they’re heroes.

Who are Munoz, Manning and Foster? Check them out.

So, who do you think is a hero ... What makes a hero ... Do you think the word hero is over-used ... Or does real life heroism not get recognized enough?

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.

A spokeswoman for the First Lady told CNN that "Our office has not received this letter" and said that a representative from Military Families United attended a meeting with the President about the release of a suspect in the Cole bombing. MFU said that meeting was held to inform the victims' families of a decision already made.

The First Lady's spokeswoman said outreach to military families is wide and "all kinds of groups are invited to the table."

One of those groups is Blue Star Families (BSF), which Wise calls "an organization developed solely by the Obama campaign in order to circumvent other military family organizations," his in particular. "I don't know that it is representative of the diversity and the opinions" of military families, he says.

(Displaying a blue star means that a family member is on active duty during a time of war. A gold star emblem means that a family member has been killed during that service.)

Kathy Roth-Douquet begs to differ.

Roth-Douquet was a founding member of Blue Star Families for Obama, a "pro-military, pro-Obama" campaign organization, and has helped acquaint Michelle Obama with military families. She is a former Clinton and Pentagon appointee and the co-author of "AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service-and How It Hurts Our Country." She lives at Parris Island, S.C., with her husband, a Marine Corps officer who twice has deployed to Iraq.

Since the election, Blue Star Families has shortened its name and changed its website to remove prominent mention of now-President Obama and, Roth-Douquet says, taken a non-partisan stance. BSF claims members in more than 68 military base communities.

This is more than an intra-mural squabble. When Congress considers spending on programs affecting military families, these groups want a seat at the table. When the news media seeks the opinions of military families, they want to be called.

Take the change in policy regarding the casket photos, for example.

Roth-Douquet says Blue Star Families was consulted. Permitting the camera coverage, but only with permission of the families of the fallen, was a compromise likely not to please either extreme, she said.

A statement in Ellsworth's name was addressed to Secy. of Defense Gates. "As the nation's leading military families organization, we are wondering why we were not consulted before your decision was announced today. We represent the largest number of military families around this nation, including those whose family members have paid the ultimate sacrifice for this country. If you did not consult with the largest military family organization, who did you speak to you?

MFU says that it has been consulted since then, as the Pentagon determines how it will be implemented.

Blue Star Families rejects Military Families United's claim of being "the nation's premier military family policy advocacy organization."

So does Joyce Raezer, executive director of the National Military Families Association (NMFA), founded 40 years ago by Navy wives at a kitchen table in Annapolis, Md. "I was a little surprised when I first read that claim," Raezer says, noting that NMFA has four decades of accrued credibility with the military, groups supporting the military and members of Congress to go with its 40,000 paying members and another 100,000 people reached through its various projects.

Four decades later, the definition of a military family has evolved from spouses and children to include parents, and key issues are the frequency and length of deployments, the effects of deployments on children, military health care, job and education opportunities for spouses and the stresses of family reunification post-deployment.

Raezer notes that since the start of the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns, a number of organizations working on behalf of military families have formed. Some, such as Military Families United, have non-profit tax status, hired staff and offices. Blue Star Families' organizational structure is still developing, Roth-Douquet says.

Raezer believes the concerns of military families are important enough that there should be room for everyone in the proverbial sandbox. "I don't know why this has to be a contest," she said.

Wise agrees, but he wants equal access to that sandbox.

Ellsworth, a 45-year-old police officer in Wixom, Mich., had no plans to become an activist. That changed when his son, Marine Corps Lance CPL Justin Mark Ellsworth, 20, was killed in Iraq on Nov. 13, 2004, by a remotely detonated improvised explosive device. Ellsworth decided that he would speak for his son on the accomplishments of the U.S. military in Iraq. "There wasn't anyone standing up for our military families," Ellsworth says. "After he (Justin) was killed, people wanted me to hate the military, to hate our President, to be angry." But that's not how he felt.

"I'm just a small town cop in the middle of Michigan, who never dreamed of being involved in something like that," says Ellsworth, who also is vice president of a separate, but related organization, Families United in Support of Our Troops and Their Mission, founded in 2005 as a counter to the anti-war campaigning of Gold Star mother Cindy Sheehan.

The National Military Families Association and Blue Star Families concentrate on "domestic" or "quality of life" issues. These are important, Ellsworth agrees, but says that Military Families United fills a void by also focusing on such "national security" issues as the military budget, the planned draw-down of troops from Iraq and increase in troops to Afghanistan, and the disposition of terror suspects at the Guantanamo Bay.

Military families, Roth-Douquet contends, are just that, families. They are not homogeneous in their opinions. Nor does being a military family member make one an expert in how the military and its civilian leadership make and implement policy, she says.

"We are not cheerleaders," Ellsworth says. "We're out there to do a job, to make sure our military and their families are taken care of." MFU supported President Obama's intention to increase the number of troops deployed in Afghanistan and appointments to his national security team, but has been sharply critical of his decisions regarding terrorism suspects and the Guantanamo Bay detention center. According to MFU statements, the President’s decision to close the Gitmo detention center "may be putting political promises ahead of our national security" and by permitting the release of a terror suspect against whom the government last year dropped charges "the President is clearly taking actions that may endanger the United States and our national interests."

As for the letter to the First Lady, it was intended to be "stern in its content." "We are being put out to the woodshed," Ellsworth complains. "We played nice. I had much more faith in the office of the President and the White House that we could talk.

The final straw was the first lady's visit to Fort Bragg. "At this point, I don't want to say the gloves come off. But we are a group to be reckoned with. And they need to understand this, that we do have a little power to wield," Ellsworth warns, politely citing good relations with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill.

As for the Obama White House, "We want them to have contact with us and acknowledge that we exist," Ellsworth says.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

George W. Bush appreciated knowing that people were praying for him as President of the United States. "I turn to them without hesitation and say, 'That is the greatest gift you can give anybody, to pray on their behalf,'" he told the National Prayer Breakfast in 2003.

Apparently not everyone who prayed for George W. Bush as President was willing to do the same for his successor, but more people may be willing to pray for President Obama than for his predecessor.

There is, of course, no count of how many people pray for the President, but there is a Presidential Prayer Team, founded by members of a Scottsdale, Arizona, church. The PPT combines a belief that there is greater power unified prayer with direction from the Apostle Paul to his disciple Timothy to encourage followers to pray for their leaders.

“First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.” (1 Timothy 2:1-2)

John Lind, president of Presidential Prayer Team, recently told the Religion News Service that 25,000 members left the organization after Barack Obama won the election. But another 41,000 people joined.

“The only … president we’ve been under has been Bush, so you’ve got to be realistic and say, ‘Wow, this could be a substantial dip in our database,’ but it wasn’t,” Lind told RNS. “I think it’s a positive. It’s almost two-to-one new member to unsubscribed.”

The PPT was born after the November 2000 election, in an adult Sunday school class where congregants were urged to pray for the new president. The next idea was to persuade 1 percent of the American population (at the time, roughly 2.8 million people) to pray for the president. The launch of this campaign was scheduled for November 2001.

The terror attacks of Sept. 11 that year expedited that plan. A week later the Presidential Prayer Team was formed. Its website went on line the next month.

Since its creation, the Presidential Prayer Team has had 1.7 million members in some 200 countries. At present there are about 500,000 subscribers. Membership is free, but some 31,500 people have made financial donations, which help provide the estimated $84,000 a month required to maintain the organization.

Events such as the 9/11 terror attacks, Hurricane Katrina, the Virginia Tech shootings and elections have led to surges in membership. “It comes in waves. In crises, people don’t have control. People have a tendency, if they have a spiritual bent, to look for something bigger than themselves,” Lind told me, even if it is a “virtual” congregation created online. Lind says he knows of no similar effort this large.

The PPT’s projects include not only prayers for the President (such as the first-100-days program in progress) but also for other government leaders and the U.S. armed forces.

Do these prayers work? “There are things we’re not going to know, this side of heaven,” Lind answered.

There have been organized prayers related to the economy (one on bipartisanship and the stimulus bill proved a touch controversial). Is the economy beyond divine intervention? “Heavens, no,” Lind chuckled.

The majority of PPT members are Christian. “The power of prayer in Jesus name is our first and foremost foundation of the Presidential Prayer Team, Lind says. Referring to the verse from Timothy cited above, Lind says that Christians are motivated to pray for their leaders “because they fell that they have a biblical responsibility to do so.”

This means praying even if they don’t care for their leaders, Lind says, noting that the Paul’s letter to Timothy came at the time of Emperor Nero, who persecuted Christians. Lind is moved by examples of people transformed personally by prayer for others. He understands that the change of occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue hasn’t been easy for some PPT members.

Religion News Service cited a woman who only signed her name as “Betty” in a message to PPT.

“I did not want to pray for Obama because I didn’t vote for him, but then I realized that I had to pray for him, and it has literally changed my life to pray for him,” wrote “Betty.” “God really changes our hearts if we allow him to do so. So, thank you for your part in getting us together.”

Another note, from a woman identified as Barbara Brown, included this admonition. “I still have to remind some of my Democrat friends that no, President Obama did not inherit all of our nation’s problems from President Bush’s administration, and I have to remind some of my Republican friends that even though we did not vote for President Obama, he is now our president and he deserves our respect, honor and prayers as commanded by God.”

PPT board members were invited to the White House and prayed with George Bush in the White House on Jan. 19, his last full day as President. “It was an honor to be there,” Lind said.

Lind hopes they have the opportunity to pray with President Barack Obama. They know he’s busy. They’re praying for him.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

“If I were an aging white person,” Ron Crouch begins provocatively, “I’d want to find some young black and Hispanic families and ask them how they’re doing because those young Hispanics and blacks will be taking my butt down the road” as they become the taxpayers and leaders of an increasingly multi-cultural America.

Age 62, Crouch is an aging white person and the road he’s talking about is his future and that of the 78 million baby boomers.

Crouch, director of the Kentucky State Data Center at the University of Louisville, travels the country speaking on trends in the American population. He fires machine-gun like bursts of population data as he talks about the years ahead. “The middle-aging, not the aging, of our population is now taking place. The aging of our population is a decade or more off,” says Crouch, explaining how elderly living longer, more than birth rates, will fuel growth in years ago come.

The white population is aging and will decline as a percentage of the population. Projections are that by 2023 there will be no racial majority among those 18-years-old and younger and that by 2042 there will be no racial majority in the country. The Latino population is increasing significantly (much faster than African-Americans), with a large percentage of young. At 15 percent, Latinos today are the largest minority group. By 2040, one of every four Americans likely will have Latino roots on their family tree.

Estimates vary, but over time more workers will leave the workforce than there will be new workers to replace them. That means fewer workers paying fewer taxes to support everything from public services to Social Security. “We need those young Hispanic workers down the road to take care of an older white population,” Crouch says.

"It's in the self-interest of the older generation to have immigrants here," Dowell Myers, an urban planning and demography professor at the University of Southern California, told the Los Angeles Times last year. "Even if you don’t like it, you have to ask the question: Who's going to fill your jobs, buy your homes and pay the taxes for old-age support programs?" Myers said then.

Now, Myers writes, boomers forced by the slumping economy to work extra years “will soften the blow of the anticipated baby boomer retirements, had they all abandoned the labor force on schedule. It also buys us a little more time to get the next generation ready to buy the boomers' homes. It is not so much newly-arrived immigrants who we will count on for help as it is the children of immigrants who are here today.”

Marta Tienda, a professor of both demographics and of sociology/public affairs at Princeton University, agrees that “the youthful Hispanic population represents a potential demographic dividend not available to other industrialized countries that are experiencing population decline,” but cautions, “Thus, immigrant labor can help to support the costs of an aging population, but their potential contributions depend on earnings capacity, which in turn depends on educational investments.”

Despite gains in the past 20 years, Latinos continue to lag behind whites in math and reading and trail in the rates at which they attend college.

Luis Lopez knows the struggle. He entered the U.S. illegally at age 15 with his family (later becoming citizens in an amnesty program). Teachers at Benjamin Franklin High School in Highland Park, Calif., saw promise and propelled him further. Lopez graduated from college and worked a series of jobs in the Los Angeles public schools. Four years ago, he came home to Ben Franklin, whose 2,700 students are 91 percent Latino. As principal he has guided the school to improved academic performance.

Lopez agrees with Crouch. “A white person should find out how these young, Hispanic kids are thinking but not so that he/she can react or defend him/herself from them. They need to know about these kids because one way or the other they will grow up to be part of our country, culture, and every day life. It is imperative that not only do we know what they are thinking but that their thinking is guided, and supported so that they are not only full members but positively contributing members of our country,” he says.