As recently as two weeks ago, Rudy Davila III, a pharmacist, was part of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s political firewall, the bloc of Hispanic voters from here to the border with Mexico whom she counted on to keep her presidential campaign from collapse. But the firewall is showing signs of cracking.

Late night funny man Conan O'Brien recently tickled his studio audience as he touched on immigration, a hot button topic heard with growing frequency on late night talk shows: "A man in Mexico weighing 1,200 pounds has lost almost half that weight and might enter the Guinness Book of World Records for most weight lost. The Mexican man lost the weight when the family inside him moved to America." Then at the Emmys on September 16, O'Brien, who won an award, provided a clip of his writing team depicted as Latino day-laborers.

If there is one thing the debates among the presidential candidates have enlightened us about, it is that illegal immigration is the emotional sleeper issue of the 2008 race.

As the number of Spanish speakers in the U.S. continues to climb, many health insurers are adjusting their Web sites to better reach the Hispanic and Latino populations. And at least one health plan says it provides targeted information on its Spanish-language site, in an effort to focus on health issues more common in this population.

The New England Patriots needed a fourth-quarter comeback to keep their perfect NFL record in tact during a Sunday night game shown on NBC. The last-minute drama kept viewers on the edge of their seat and helped NBC grab the top-rated English-language program viewed by Hispanics, according to figures released by the Nielsen Media Group for the week of Nov. 19-25.

Hispanic youths in North Carolina, struggling to find acceptance in U.S. culture, are increasingly turning to gangs and other self-destructive behavior, according to studies and those who follow the trends.