Washington File

It's an indication of where the gun issue stands in this election campaign that this item was buried in the sport pages:

"NBA Commissioner David Stern said Wednesday that he would prefer his players to leave their firearms behind when they go out."

Stern was speaking to journalists in the aftermath of an Indianapolis shooting earlier this month. Indiana Pacer Stephen Jackson fired a gun in the air at least five times outside an Indianapolis strip club. He told police he was shooting in self-defence.

Charlotte Bobcat Lonnie Baxter is just finishing a five-month stretch, a sentence he received for firing two shots near the White House. Apparently the shooting arose during an out-late-at-night celebration.

When you mix these events with the spate of school shootings this fall, particularly the killings of innocent Amish schoolchildren in Pennsylvania, you might have thought the gun issue would feature in this fall's congressional elections.

Not happening.

In our family, mother-in-law Jeanette is the no-nonsense, can't-fool-her matriarch who everyone goes to for common sense counsel.

She's a mother of four, still volunteering at St. Petersburg Children's Hospital in Florida at the age of 82.

Jeanette is a competitive bowler who returned to high school in her seventies to complete the diploma that was interrupted by the Second World War and her marriage to Bill.

Nobody in the family can remember anyone pulling the wool over her eyes.

So when she phoned the other day to tell us that she had just seen Barack Obama on the Larry King TV show and he was her choice for president, that was a signal for the wise heads to pay attention.

And Obama is certainly turning heads.

He was on last week's cover of Time magazine, depicted as a black man who, like Michael Jordon or Tiger Woods, has somehow transcended America's racial hangups and stereotypes.

His book, The Audacity of Hope, is at the top of Amazon.com's bestseller list. As well, no less an icon than Oprah Winfrey has endorsed him heartily.

On Sunday's Meet The Press broadcast, Obama allowed that "yes he had thought about running for the presidency in 2008."

Asked whether he was ready to be president, he replied "I'm not sure anybody is ready to be president before they're president. Ultimately I trust the judgment of the American people that in any election they sort it through.

"We have a long and rigorous process. I'm confident I'd be run through the paces pretty good."

Sounds like someone who is giving this idea some pretty close attention. But keep in mind Obama has been a senator for less than two years. What's more, he's a Democrat, the minority party, so there is little legislation with his fingerprints on it that he can point to.

The news from Iraq is not good. The plan needs modification.

That is the gist of the regular Thursday military briefing from Baghdad.

Major-General William B. Caldwell IV described the joint U.S.-Iraqi military operation that was started this summer in stark, unsettling terms. They were not what a governing party wants to hear only weeks before crucial mid-term elections.

The operation, Caldwell said, "has not met our overall expectations of sustaining a reduction in the levels of violence. We're finding insurgent elements, the extremists, are pushing back hard."

These insurgents are in fact returning to areas where U.S. and Iraqi troops had previously driven them from, the general added. "We're constantly going back in and doing clearing operations."

The Operation called Together Forward was launched midsummer with the deployment of some 12,000 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers in Baghdad's toughest neighbourhoods.

As these neighbourhoods were cleared of "dead-enders" and extremists, command would be turned over to the Iraqis.

In Washington, the operation was quickly embraced as the beginning of the end. The Iraqis would stand up, and eventually the Americans could go home.

Basic services like trash collection, electricity and traffic control would be re-established.

Instead, the October death toll among American servicemen and women has risen to 74, as of this writing, putting it on pace for this month to be one of the deadliest in two years.

The civilian death total in Baghdad is much higher still — 2,667 for the month of September, according to the Iraq Health Ministry. It's a figure disputed as conservative by many western journalists. But even so it represents nearly 100 dead ever day in the capital.

At precisely 7:46 this morning (ET), the U.S. population hit the 300,000,000 mark, according to the Census Bureau's population clock.

When I first heard about the clock I thought of champagne corks exploding, banners and confetti flying, and what positive things I would be told by proud Americans.

Not the case.

To begin with, the Bush Administration scotched any big celebration of the event, which is in itself quite telling.

In 1967 when the U.S. population reached 200 million, then president Lyndon Johnson held a big press conference to talk of the country's past and the promise of the future.

The news media conducted a national and much ballyhooed search for the child born at the exact moment this milestone was supposed to have been reached. (A baby boy in Atlanta was anointed.)

But this time was a little different. This time the Census Bureau was taking into account illegal immigration, and with an election in November — with border security and illegal migrants prime issues — prudence prevailed.

The bureau says there is a child born every 7 seconds in the U.S., a death every 13 and a new immigrant every 31. If illegal immigrants and the larger families they tend to have were subtracted from the count, the U.S. would show a decline in population, government demographers say.

But that is clearly not the case. About a million illegal immigrants are added each year, the bureau says, to the point now where 12 per cent of the U.S. population is foreign born, the largest proportion since the 1920s.

Just over three weeks to the U.S. mid-term elections and 33 Senate seats are up for grabs.

Twenty-five of them are not competitive. The winners are pretty well decided already.

Eight, however, are toss-ups. Seven are currently Republican, one is Democrat.

In recent days, party strategists on both sides of the fight have told CBC that the current mood of the voter appears to be shifting to the Democrats. They have improved their chances to win the Senate, but it is still an uphill battle.

To take control of the Senate, Democrats must defend their toss-up candidate and win six new seats, which in practical terms means winning six of the seven vulnerable Republican states.

At the moment the Democrats are struggling to save the seat of Robert Menendez in New Jersey. The freshman senator is in a tight race against a strong challenger, Tom Kean Jr. whose father was one of the state's most popular governors and was also the capable chairman of the 9/11 Commission following the attacks of 2001.

Menendez, whose lead is a mere four points, according to the most recent poll, has also likely found his campaign weakened by charges of corruption against the state Democratic party.

The Republicans are currently trailing in all but one of their toss-up campaigns, and there the trend has been downward.

At the United Nations, the top powers are trying to come up with a package of economic sanctions that will convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

Hasn't worked before and most experts believe it won't work now.

Kim Jung Il doesn't seem to care about his people's needs. Millions of his citizens live just above the starvation level. Pyongyang's focus has been feeding and clothing its military and preventing a total collapse of the North Korean economy.

So, tightening the economic vise leads to what?

Harder times for the average North Korean, but the elite will survive since they can count on roughly $3 billion in trade that comes over the Chinese border every year.

That trade has never been put under threat of sanctions. For many world leaders, that makes China the only country in the world with any leverage over Kim Jung Il.

It took better than 48 hours of verbal pushing and shoving. Most of it was done on the phone because Congress isn't sitting and members are back home campaigning for the Nov. 7 elections.

For beleaguered Republicans, developing a strategy to save their electoral bacon in the wake of the controversy surrounding now ex-congressman Mark Foley and his suggestive emails to teenage congressional pages was a truly national affair, with datelines emanating from such places as Batavia Illinois, Washington D.C., Arizona and central Florida.

Republican insiders who know of the discussions tell CBC News it went this way.

The party was stunned when the Washington Times called on Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert to resign on Tuesday. The Times is easily the most reliable pro-Republican newspaper in the United States.

Its editorial page editor is Tony Blankley, longtime aide to Newt Gingrich, and very close to those who contribute large sums of money to party causes. The call for Hastert's resignation therefore was seen as coming from some of the party's most powerful elements.

The resignation call then gained momentum in other Republican circles, particularly among the more conservative wings of the party such as the family-values folks, the pro-abortion activists and the religious right.

At Hastert's Batavia headquarters, the Speaker reluctantly offered to step aside, to help staunch the controversy.

But at the same time, staffers who were talking to those on the campaign trail were hearing a different message. Voters were angry, yes. But not as obsessed with the scandal as the heavy media coverage would suggest.

Not only that, but among the Republican faithful, the storyline that this was a Democratic plot was gaining traction.

Yesterday we reported on the scandal surrounding the sexually explicit e-mails and text messages sent to teenage congressional pages from now-ex-congressman Mark Foley.

Subsequently Foley checked himself into an alcohol addiction centre in his native Florida and apologized. He also authorized a spokesman to say that the former Republican congressman, who resigned last Friday, is not a pedophile and has not assaulted anyone.

Still, the public anger against Foley is widespread and palpable.

But the anger directed against the Republican congressional leadership appears even greater.

The questions being asked are simple: When did the leadership know about these improper contacts and what did it do about them?

Since the scandal broke about a week ago, it has been reported that Foley's behaviour raised alarm bells in 2001, again in 2003 and finally in 2005 when he was warned to break off cyberspace contact with a former congressional page after the teenager's family protested.

Also, as noted here yesterday, other Republicans continue to come forward, saying Speaker Dennis Hastert was well informed about Foley months ago, and took no action.

The dam has burst.

Congressional offices are reporting a torrent of negative e-mail and calls demanding Hastert resign. Leading and very conservative Republican voices such as Bay Buchanan, Richard Viguerie and even the conservative Washington Times have demanded the Speaker's ouster.

Today the focus is on ex-congressman Mark Foley, a Republican from Florida.

Foley resigned abruptly last week amid allegations he sent sexually explicit text messages and e-mails to teenage congressional pages.

This is potentially a federal crime and the FBI is investigating not only these allegations but also other questions involving the Republican leadership. Did the GOP bosses know about Foley's activities and look the other way in order "to preserve a congressional seat in an election year," as Democratic leader Harry Reid now charges, upping the political stakes.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, a Republican from Illinois, first told the media he learned of the issue only last week. Since then, however, New York Republican Thomas Reynolds said he notified Hastert months ago of Foley's e-mails to a 16-year-old boy who was a page in the House of Representatives.

At the same time there are questions over who leaked this information about Foley to ABC News, which broke the story.

This has not been a good season for American lawmakers.

This summer Republican Randy Cunningham was sentenced to eight years in jail for bribery. Democrat William Jefferson is trying to explain to the FBI how $90,000 ended up in his freezer. The police are investigating allegations he accepted bribes to help arrange African business deals.

And there is Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist now in jail for five years. He's admitted to bribery, potentially involving folks from both parties.

The stain on Capitol Hill is there for everyone to see and yet the issue for party operatives seems to be: Can it be turned into a political advantage?

My wife and I own a small farm in Northern Virgina.

Fauquier County to be precise.

About 70 kilometres from Washington, it is an agricultural area with a population little changed since the Civil War. The names on mailboxes are the same as those who fought at nearby Bull Run, Antietam, Manassas and Salem over 140 years ago.

At least that was the case until about ten years back when the first Hispanic workers arrived.

They came, mostly illegally, to work on farms, particularly the wealthy horse farms in the region.

This past weekend, I noticed that all the employees at the McDonald's franchise are Hispanic. So are all the employees at the big service station on nearby Route 66.

There are now two stores here selling foods solely for the Latino palate. Most businesses have bilingual signs. You can buy enchiladas and Mexican-style cowboy boots as easily as Snickers bars and Air Jordans.

For the past few years, any major work at our farm, such as the recent chimney repair, was done by companies owned and operated by Hispanic workers. All my neighbours report the same thing.

So today's report from the Pew Hispanic Center is no surprise.

Unemployment among Hispanics fell sharply this year and their wages are rising. Their labour force is growing rapidly. Hispanics now represent 13 per cent of all workers in the U.S. and in this year alone they accounted for 40 per cent of all new jobs.