Recess-bound Hill Dems pledge to re-address terror surveillance rules after being stampeded into approving a stop-gap deal to loosen the FISA law for the next six months, The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima and Joby Warrick relate. In this particular kerfuffle, Mike McConnell acted as lead White House lobbyist, The Chicago Tribune’s Mark Silva mentions, adding that he hopes the top spy will “pay as much attention to the ‘chatter’ of [terrorists] as he paid to the floor debate.” The FISA clash has been shaped by Dem concern over the political repercussions of being perceived as interfering with counterterror espionage, The New York Times’ Carl Hulse and Edmund L. Andrews analyze.

Poly-ticks: GOP White House hopefuls played down differences in yesterday’s Iowa debate, wading into a row between Dem candidates over military strikes on terrorists, Reuters’ Kay Henderson recounts. As NYC mayor, Rudy Giuliani “took the disaster of 9/11 as a great opportunity . . . Right from the beginning he was trying to exploit this,” Gotham-chronicling novelist Kevin Baker unloads to The Nation’s Jon Weiner. White House wanna-bes “are starting to detail how they would deal with the situation in Iraq and the war on terrorism,” Lawrence (Kansas)’s WIBW-TV 13leads, highlighting favorite son Sen. Sam Brownback’s views.

Wars of words: GOP contender Mitt Romney’s citation of Hezbollah’s social welfare networking as a possible U.S. role model shocks and appalls WorldNetNews’s Aaron Klein — while GOP might-run Newt Gingrich slams the administration’s “phony war” on terror and urges less reliance on imported oil, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Bob Deans records. The Post’s Rohan Sullivan, meanwhile, has Pakistan terming “irresponsible” Dem Sen. Barack Obama’s stated willingness, if president, to strike unilaterally against al Qaeda there — a criticism Romney wholly endorses, Reuters’ Steven Holland adds. GOP candidate Tom Tancredo sparked his own to-do, advocating deterring terror nukes by threatening “an attack on the holy sites in Mecca and Medina,” The Denver Post reports — something he’s argued before — and see Slate’s Timothy Noah on “the biggest fool running for president.”

Feds: 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was subjected to the CIA’s harshest methods while held in secret prisons during three-plus years, The Washington Post details from Jane Mayer’s New Yorker “look inside the CIA’s secret interrogation program.” Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., assails Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., for “scare tactics” in warning last week that Congress should stay out of town until Sept. 12, i.e., after the sixth 9/11 anniversary, ABC 7 News spotlights. The FBI has made home raids in Justice’s criminal probe into who leaked details of the warrantless eavesdropping program to the news media, Newsweek notes. The Secret Service arrested a “not fully clothed” man who clambered over the White House fence yesterday, the Post reports.

Nervous in the service: “Military police have briefed local authorities in major cities, including New York, about the rising danger that gang members in the military could share their skills with gangs on the streets,” CBS Newssays. With a protracted war siphoning away scores of traditional recruits, police departments nationwide are casting a wider net to fill thousands of uniforms — and often scraping bottom, USA Today tells. Deployment of California National Guard officers, trucks and equipment to Iraq threatens its ability to respond to a major disaster in the state, The Contra Costa Times quotes the Army secretary.

State and local: Shortly after Minneapolis’ mayor was elected, the 9/11 attacks led him to undergo federal disaster response training — which has stood him in good stead with last Wednesday’s fatal bridge collapse, The Associated Press says. Gotham has thus far raised $25 million of the $90 million needed to complete establishing a “Ring of Steel” — thousands of surveillance cameras and license plate readers — surrounding the lower Manhattan financial district, CNN spotlights. An influx of new Border Patrollers to northern Montana since 9/11 “has been nothing but good news for a region that is desperate for wage-earners and house buyers and taxpayers,” a Times op-ed observes.

Bid-ness: DHS’s gathering crackdown on hiring the undocumented “has sparked fears that farmers will be left without workers to pick crops, restaurants without cooks and dishwashers, and small businesses without a ready source of casual labor,” the Los Angeles Times surveys. DHS is one of only two federal agencies that are improving efforts to outsource government jobs to the private sector, United Press International quotes from an OMB report card. Would consumers be as comfortable with their purchases of counterfeit goods, “if they knew they could be funding terrorist activities?” India’s Timesnow.tv asks.

Highway havoc: Explosives-related charges will be filed today against two engineering students — of Middle Eastern descent — discovered during a traffic stop Saturday to have explosives in their trunk, The Charleston Post and Courier conveys. Reuters then has the FBI reassuring that the materials — which were detonated — were for making homemade fireworks, not dangerous munitions. “Why are we so worried about terrorism when so many more people are dying on our highways?” an LA Times op-ed wants to know. Cell phone problems attending the Minneapolis bridge collapse raise questions about whether wireless providers are prepared for crisis-sparked call volumes, The Chicago Tribune spotlights.

Coming and going: President Bush on Friday signed the Dem-pushed 9/11 commission bill, which among other measures will begin the move toward screening of all airliner freight cargo, Agence France-Presse reports. Another provision could have travelers from visa-waiver nations facing delays of up to 72 hours between buying an air ticket to enter the United States and being allowed to board their flights, The Wall Street Journal adds. Among other new wrinkles in TSA routines taking effect Saturday, fliers must now remove large electronics such as games from carry-on bags for checkpoint inspection, The Seattle Times tells. Fifty-three separate pieces of information on travelers to and from Britain could be collected in a drive to improve security at U.K. ports and airports, The Times of London tells.

Water World: The surfacing of a homemade replica of a 1776 submersible Friday near an NYC cruise ship dock triggered a massive security alert, landing a controversial New York artist in some trouble, Newsday notes. Washington state ferry workers have been told to watch for suspicious passengers after “someone took some out-of-the-ordinary photos,” Seattle’s KCPQ-TV 13 relays. Yesterday was the 217^th anniversary of the founding of the Coast Guard, now an arm of DHS, The Pensacola News Journal notes.

Courts and rights: Lawyers for twomen who pled guilty in an Ohio terror plot say they were part of a group with as many as 10 members, The Columbus Dispatch recounts. Prosecutors object to an unusual request in a Georgia terror case for a strategy session between two jailed defendants, APrelates. The Liberty City Seven say their only conspiracy “was a con job to extort money from al Qaeda, not a terror plot to topple the U.S. government,” The Miami Herald mentions. Evidence collected by the FBI over a decade fuels the federal terror-support case against what was once the nation’s largest Muslim charity, AP also reports. The FBI is looking at a Philadelphia-area “convicted felon with strong ties to the Middle East” as a terror suspect, 6 ABC Action Newsnotes. A judge on Friday refused to reduce the $1 million bond for a Southern Illinois University student who is alleged to have threatened a Virginia Tech-like “murderous rampage,” AP reports.

Qaeda Qorner: U.S. embassies — i.e., “spy dens” — are prime targets, CNN has al Qaeda’s reviled American spokesman threatening in a new video. An al Qaeda propaganda ad, headlined “Wait for the Big Surprise” and featuring a graphic of the U.S. and Pakistani presidents in front of a burning White House, was also posted online last week, ABC News notes. “Since escaping from U.S. custody in Afghanistan two years ago, Abu Yahya al-Libi has emerged as al Qaeda’s attack dog,” Asia Times profiles. Impelling the tough new U.S. line on Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf is the specter of a “newly assertive” al Qaeda rebuilding a stronghold to plan attacks — in a “disconcerting replay” of the pre-9/11 period, the Post reports. Afghanistan’s beleaguered president concedes “we are not closer” to nabbing Osama bin Laden, The Chicago Tribunerelays.

Over there: The Sunni insurgent mastermind of the 2006 bombing of Samarra’s Golden Mosque — sparking sectarian violence across Iraq — was killed last week, the LA Times tells. “Despite the lessons of the past few years, sovereignty issues, competitive thinking and a lack of trust are still having a negative impact on the practicalities of the European Union’s fight against terrorism,” Eurotopics assesses. The last trainload of Chinese troops and arms has arrived in Chelyabinsk for long-planned joint Russian-Chinese-Central Asian anti-terror exercises, Xinhua says.

Pimp my homeland: The blogosphere has stumbled upon The DHS Store, where official Homies (only) can e-shop for the latest bling: DHS mouse pads, FEMA travel mugs, ICE mini maglights and even TSA ladies pique shirts. Also on offer, Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow relates, are “a wide selection of meaningless recognition awards (for FEMA too, but no ‘Heck of a job, ______!’ plaques, alas), and, of course, DHS silver cuff links, to communicate your general upper-crustiness as you testify about all those people you helped ship off to Syria.” When the schwag shop briefly went off-line Friday, Threat Level’s Ryan Singel wrote that “he’d like to think that’s only because so many readers tried to order a shot glass at once, but it’s much more likely that the site was taken down because terrorists found the site and tried to order DHS travel mugs. Sources tell me nothing says not-a-terrorist in the Pakistani wilds like walking around with a DHS insulated mug full of chai.” Reference, also, About.com in re: the indispensable Homeland Security Depot.