Good morning.

Here are a few Washington events of note for Wednesday, May 23, 2007 as collected by the Associated Press.

President Bush is delivering the commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut. 11:15 a.m.

The House Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on the firing of U.S. attorneys with the key witness Monica Goodling, the former Justice Department liaison to the White House. 10:15 a.m.

Posted by David Lerman at 8:06 a.m. CDT

If his doctors have their way, presidential assailant John W. Hinckley Jr. will begin making regular two-week visits to his parents’ home near Williamsburg and look for volunteer work.

Twenty-six years after shooting President Reagan and three others outside a Washington hotel, Hinckley could become a part-time resident of the Williamsburg community—possibly even volunteering at the local public library.

The proposal by St. Elizabeth’s Hospital— Hinckley’s home for the past quarter-century—would mark the next phase of a treatment plan aimed at helping Hinckley transition to life outside the confines of a mental institution. He has already completed about a dozen multi-day trips to his parents’ home in James City County, which by all accounts were successful.

Posted by David Lightman at 4:25 pm CDT

College campuses are among the safer places in America - yet they are also among the most vulnerable terrorist targets, senators were told today.

“It's no secret that campuses have many elements that make them attractive targets for terrorism,” said Steven J. Healy, president of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators. Yet at the same time, he said, “campuses are reasonably safe when compared to the larger communities in which they exist.”

Healy's message was repeated by other experts at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on campus security. Lawmakers heard testimony as students at Virginia Tech, scene of last week's massacre of 32 people, returned to classes.

Posted by Karoun Demirjian at 11:12 am CDT

As the dust barely settles around the newest and worst shooting in U.S. history, an age-old dispute is resurfacing over the smoking guns.

Strangely enough, the impetus for rehashing of the Second Amendment is not coming in the form of a call for tighter rules around gun purchases that may have prevented Cho Seung-Hui from buying a 9-millimeter and a .22-caliber in the last month; nor is it a defensive “guns don’t kill people – people kill people” retort.

Instead, Second Amendment activists have begun to go the offensive, adopting an “I told you so” attitude about the Virginia Tech slayings, and arguing that if more schools and colleges allowed students and faculty to carry firearms on campus, incidents like the tragedies that transpired Monday – or at least the sweeping scale of them – could be avoided.

Posted by William Neikirk at 6:25 a.m. CDT

Steven Janosik is a leading expert on the Clery Act, a law requiring colleges and universities to issue annual reports on campus crime and their security measures to deal with it.

He also happens to be a professor at Virginia Tech, where his extensive research went from abstract to real in one violent rampage by a single gunman on Monday.

Janosik is no fan of the law, first passed by Congress in 1990 and amended several times in the wake of rising campus violence. He said parents and students do not, as a rule, read the reports. And students are more likely to respond to personal appeals and warnings about their safety than a long report on a website, he added.

Posted by Mark Silva at 9:36 am CDT

President Bush, ordering the nation's flags flown at half-staff in honor of the 32 people slain by a student gunman at Virginia Tech, will speak of a day of mourning today -- saving political debates for later.

"The president and Mrs. Bush are going to Virginia Tech today as representatives for the entire nation… on a day that is full of sorrow for every American,'' said Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman, calling the tone of the five or six minute address that the president plans to deliver at a campus convocation today similar to the regrets about the violence that has disrupted a sanctuary of learning that he voiced on Monday – "the tone is similar to yesterday, as you would expect, given the tragedy and everyone's heavy hearts.''

And, while acknowledging that the shooting spree at Virginia Tech is certain to spur a new national debate about gun control, the White House says it is too early to say what direction that dialog might take.

"We understand that there is going to be, and there has been, an ongoing national conversation about gun control… We are going to be participants,'' Perino said, calling it premature to discuss where it may lead. "Everyone has been shaken to the core by this event,'' she said, suggesting the nation should ''allow the facts of the case to unfold as we talk any more about policies…The facts of this case need to unfold…We will participate in that (conversation), but today is not the day.''

Posted by the Washington Bureau at 9:25 a.m. CDT

Cho Seung-Hui, the Virginia Tech student identified as the campus shooter responsible for the largest, gun-related mass murder in U.S. history, was a troubled 23-year-old legal permanent resident from South Korea who investigators believe left an invective-filled note in his dorm room that included a rambling list of grievances and died with the words "Ismail Ax" in red ink on the inside of one of his arms.

And he had shown recent signs of violent, aberrant behavior, according to an investigative source, including setting a fire in a dorm room and allegedly stalking some women. A note believed to have been written by Cho was found in his dorm room that railed against "rich kids," "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans" on campus.

Posted by Jim Tankersley at 7:25 am CDT

The dean of Virginia Tech's Engineering Science and Mechanics department said in an e-mail this morning that two of the department's professors were among the 31 people killed by a gunman at Norris Hall on Monday.

The dean, Ishwar K. Puri, offered this eulogy of Professors Liviu Librescu - whom students described on Monday as attempting to barricade his classroom door while they jumped from a window to safety - and Kevin Granata. Both, the dean wrote, were killed "while serving Virginia Tech."

Read the dean's remarks:

Posted by Jim Tankersley at 3:33 pm, updated 4 pm CDT

The morning shootings that shocked the Virginia Tech campus have left students with a screaming question: Why weren't they warned earlier that a gunman was loose on their campus?

"A lot of us were just questioning why someone was shot at 7 a.m. and the school wasn’t in lockdown," said Max Davis, a 19-year-old freshman and one of several students interviewed this afternoon by Tribune reporters.

The shooting shortly after 7 a.m. EDT at a dormitory and subsequent shooting after 9 a.m. in an academic building have left a reported 31 people dead, at least. Many students say they didn't hear about either of them until they received this e-mail just before 9:30 a.m. EDT.

Campus police believed, at first, that they were dealing with a "domestic'' shooting at 7:15 am, when two were killed in a dormitory, the police chief said at a news conference just now. The university president said they believed the situation was under control -- until the second shooting spree began. At a school of 26,000 students, the president said, just 9,000 live on campus. And by 8 am, they were heading to class.

Judge the urgency of the campus email dispatched at 9:26 am EDT for yourself:

Posted by Mark Silva at 3:20 pm CDT

"Our nation is shocked and saddened by the news of the shootings at Virginia Tech today,'' President Bush said this afternoon, in a brief, somber statement delivered from the White House on the day of the worst mass-shooting in U.S. history. "The exact total has not yet been confirmed, but it appears that more than 30 people were killed and many more were wounded.''

The president, who had spoken with Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine and Virginia Tech President Charles Steger, appeared before television cameras in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House.

"Schools should be places of safety and sanctuary and learning,'' the president said. "When that sanctuary is violated, the impact is felt in every American classroom and every American community.