As al Qaeda threatens to blow up U.S. embassies, “intelligence gleaned from last month’s British ‘doctors plot’ of car bombers suggests that a Qaeda cell is on the loose in the American homeland,” The New York Sun’s Eli Lake leads. There has been plenty of talk on and around Capitol Hill about a possible terror strike on the upcoming 9/11 anniversary, “but those in charge of looking out for danger, say they don’t see any on the horizon,” WUSA-TV 9’s Doug Buchanan notes.

Little pitchers: With the short-term changes enacted last weekend, the spy chief, not a secret federal court, has the decisive voice on monitoring Americans’ chatter with foreigners overseas, The Associated Press’ Katherine Shrader spotlights — while The New York Times’ Eric Lichtblau finds the White House denying that the measure accords sweeping new powers. The expanded surveillance program contains no mechanism for outside oversight, as an earlier House measure had insisted, The Washington Post’s Walter Pincus reports. Dem solons’ acquiescence to the changes shows “there is at least one arena in which Mr. Bush can still hold the line,” the Times’ Jim Rutenberg ruminates.

Obama-rama: Illinois senator and prez contender Barack Obama “has been called naive and inexperienced. After this speech, we would add the modifier ‘dangerously’ to each of those adjectives,” the rock-ribbed Manchester Union Leader lashes after his terror address. GOP White House contenders “formed an unlikely alliance with Hillary Clinton when they branded Obama reckless for suggesting he might bomb Pakistan,” The Daily Telegraph’s Tony Harnden reports from Sunday’s debate. With Clinton’s lead growing, “Obama appears to be overreaching to keep the spotlight and highlight their differences,” one-time GOP candidate Pat Buchanan analyzes in The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

London bridges: Disaster probers working the Minneapolis bridge collapse “are armed with a powerful technological arsenal that will enable them to get answers much quicker than in previous eras,” AP surveys. Since 9/11, Minnesota’s responder community has been shifting to an 800 MHz system for emergency comm, Minnesota Monitor adds, and so when wireless systems were jammed after the bridge tumbled Friday, “emergency systems functioned well.” Citing “security concerns,” state officials maintain a death grip on the most recent safety inspection reports for northeast Florida’s bridges, First Coast News notes. Wisconsin, too, “is aware of which bridges are most vulnerable to a terrorist attack, but it’s not sharing them with the public,” The Madison Capitol Timestells. Press politicians should “publicly acknowledge the risk of neglecting the bridges, roads and other essential hardware that goes into making a modern civilization,” a leading homeland maven urges in Popular Mechanics.

State and local: A federal judge yesterday rejected the NYPD’s efforts to withhold another nearly 2,000 pages of raw intel detailing its covert surveillance at the 2004 GOP convention, The New York Times tells. “In stark contrast to his predecessor,” Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter “has made state homeland security a serious top priority, The Cherry Creek News relays. DHS “has been good to northwest Arkansas, pouring $7 million into the region “in the last eight [sic] years,” Little Rock’s FOX 16 News says. “If terrorism blasted into Cape Coral [Fla.], the fire department wants to be prepared,” The News-Press leads. Under a $4 million DHS grant, three U.S. communities are to be studied to see how quickly they can return to normal after a disaster, AP reports.

Follow the money: A fledgling movement to get public retirement fund managers to disinvest in companies doing business with identified terrorist states has not caught on in Alabama, The Tuscaloosa Newsnotes. GOP lawmakers are pressing to condition U.S. funding for the United Nations on the world body’s ending support for NGOs with links to al Qaeda, The New York Sun says. A new letter purportedly written by the author of terrorist threats against Goldman Sachs claims the whole thing was a hoax “conceived by three misguided teenagers,” The New York Daily News reveals.

Bugs ‘n bombs: Two Muslim students found with what the police call pipe bombs — and they describe as fireworks — in their car near a South Carolina Navy base were hit yesterday with explosives charges, AP reports. Five Oregon juveniles nabbed with stolen chemicals were apparently plotting to bomb their high school, The Salem Statesman Journal says. A food industry conference was warned last week that the global food system is an inviting target for terrorists, The Homeland Security Daily Wire relates. Organizations based at an animal lab linked to Britain’s foot and mouth outbreak insist there have been no breaches of their biosecurity procedures, Sky News notes.

Coming and going: The FBI and DHS are investigating several incidents of laser beams being shined into cockpits of landing planes in central Florida, Orlando’s WKMG 6 says. A Delta flight attendant appeared in court Monday to answer charges she was drunk on the job and told a captain “You’re dead” as she was removed from the plane, AP reports. Tighter border security since 9/11 has led to an increase in domestic marijuana cultivation closer to urban areas, the Post reports. Arizona’s governor is urging federal officials to halt the drawdown of National Guard’s deployed along the US-Mexico border, The Arizona Republic relays. “Two years ago, Sen. John Cornyn said a border fence was a bad idea. Last month, he voted to build one,” The Dallas Morning News leads. A GAO report finds “significant information security control weaknesses” in the systems supporting US-VISIT, Homeland Security Watch notifies.

Talking terror: “For years now, the world has been suffering from a nasty gang war between two criminal factions — the Islamists and the Bushists. Both are tiny, radical minorities within the wider polities they falsely claim to represent,” Chris Floyd flails for Atlantic Free Press. While Germans clash over tougher terror laws, the Spanish debate over security has been accompanied by a discussion about how to integrate Muslims living there, Tanja Gabler contrasts in Eurotopics. “A just counter-terrorism policy would . . . focus on strengthening homeland security and the international mechanisms that hold terrorists accountable,” John Feffer and John Gershman intone for Foreign Policy in Focus.

The Gratingest Generation: In World War II, America was “mobilized for victory,” so what’s with “the disgraceful parade of Americans who, seeing their country at war with a savage enemy, have become ‘advocates of surrender, withdrawal and defeat,’” a plaintive Manon McKinnon complains in The American Spectator. “It does no good for us to be dead and theoretically free . . . I am in favor of more intrusion into our civil liberties as we had during World War II,” Cybercast News Service’s Kevin Mooney has Washington Times’ lead editorialist Tony Blankley asserting.

Facts on the ground: “I think it’s obvious that the victims of the kidnappings or killings are not primarily the real goal. The real goal is to create news, to create coverage of these killings and to create panic around the world,” a German media maven tells Deutsche Welle in re: Taliban-held German hostages. The London car-bombing plot “highlights a fundamental nature of homeland security — states’ vulnerabilities are infinite, and states cannot protect every place, every time,” Tay Thiam Chye essays for Spero News. “Suffering doesn’t magically turn an ordinary person into a hero. Some of the office workers who died on 9/11 were truly heroic, sacrificing their own chance of escape to help others. But many of those who died never even got a chance to be heroic,” Rosa Brooks ruminates in the Los Angeles Times.

Courts and rights: A pre-sentence report recommends that the Lodi man convicted of terrorism last year — due for judgment Friday — spend 35 years in prison, the News-Sentinel says. An Arizona judge says a Border Patrol agent must stand trial for murder for shooting a Mexican immigrant in a case that has sparked a furor, Reuters reports. Oakland has arrested seven with ties to Your Black Muslim Bakery in connection with three homicides, including the daylight murder of a newspaper editor, The San Francisco Chronicle conveys. An al Qaeda suspect faces deportation to Russia after a U.S. jury convicted him Friday of three charges of immigration fraud, The Toronto Globe and Mail mentions. An International Red Cross official tells Agence France-Presseit remains concerned about the fate of terror suspects allegedly held in secret U.S. detention centers.

Over there: A judge in Port of Spain yesterday ordered the extradition to the Uinited States of three Caribbean men accused in the alleged JFK airport bombing plot, Trinidad and Tobago Express recounts. President Bush said Monday that with “actionable” intel the United States and Pakistan can take out al Qaeda leaders, without saying whether he would ever order U.S. forces to act on their own, the Post reports. Lebanese police have killed the deputy commander of al Qaeda-inspired militants entrenched in a Palestinian refugee camp, AP reports. Scotland Yard is carrying out five times more counterterror spot searches since failed car bombings in June, The Guardian relays. Israeli security officials on Monday warned citizens traveling in Egypt, Jordan and other Muslim countries to leave immediately due to a “concrete and severe” threat of terror attacks, AP reports.

Herd on the street: “FEMA is under fire for being slow to investigate reports by Hurricane Katrina victims who testified they’ve fallen ill from high levels of formaldehyde in their FEMA-provided trailers. What do you think?” The Onion’s wandering street photographer asks of random passers-by. “Oh come on, those illnesses could’ve been the result of any one of the many governmental failures following Katrina,” office manager Therese Dougan chides. “This sounds like a pretty serious federal emergency. Thank God we have FEMA to take care of it,” grants advisor Jeremy Wallace remarks. “If anyone else can think of a better place for FEMA to store its formaldehyde, I’d like to hear it,” systems analyst Kelly Fowler demands. Tune in, as well, to Doyle Redland’s breaking item on Onion Radio News: “Arby’s Debuts New Post-Apocalyptic Sandwich Deals.”