Justice has toldCongress that U.S. intel operatives attempting to thwart terror attacks can legally use interrogation methods that might otherwise be prohibited under international law, The New York Times’ Mark Mazzetti mentions — while The Wall Street Journal’s Evan Perez andSiobhan Gorman suggests Justice has “muddied the public understanding of what is torture.” At a House hearing last week, the FBI director and a GOP congressman “sketched out a far-reaching plan for warrantless surveillance of the Internet,” CNET News’ Declan McCullagh recounts.

Feds:DHS wants to enlist the country’s 80 million recreational boaters to help reduce the chances that a small boat could deliver a nuclear or dirty bomb somewhere along 95,000 miles of waterways, The Associated Press’ Eileen Sullivan and Scott Lindlaw report. DHS’s Mike Chertoff is expected to announce a new security initiative for the nation’s airports at BWI airport today, The Baltimore Sun’s Nicole Fuller informs. By failing to modernize the law that governs the surveillance of terrorists overseas, House Democratic leaders are playing Russian roulette with our security, New York Reps. Pete King and Vito Fossella rumble in Human Events.

Mud wresting: The Clinton campaign “now operates in a fashion reminiscent of the Fedayeen Saddam . . . who in the aftermath of Baghdad’s liberation [slipped] into plainclothes to take on the infidel,” Brett Winterble contends in Human Events. “As indicated by the public support that his candidacy has received by accused terrorist fundraiser Hatem El-Hady, Barack Obama’s version of change [is one] that terrorists and their U.S. supporters can believe in,” Patrick Poole pounds on FrontPage. “Obama, like Nixon, in fact has a secret plan not to end the war . . . What he is offering is a basic vision of withdrawal with muddy particulars,” The New Republic’s Michael Crowley comments. “Clinton’s intemperate remarks about ‘obliterating’ Iran cloud her primary win with questions about her judgment,” Robert Scheer suggests in The Nation. (“This is the foreign politics of the madhouse,” her pledge makes Arab News gasp — and see The Boston Globe on “Hillary Strangelove.”)

The bigger picture:Concord (N.H.) Monitor editorialists would like the Dem contenders to put down the cudgels and address matters like: “What changes would you make to protect America from terrorism without sacrificing civil liberties?” The “beguiling Democratic version of the global war on terrorism: Get out of Iraq and put more U.S. forces into Afghanistan” rests on “campaign-fostered illusions that troop numbers and money alone can turn the tide against terrorists,” The Washington Post’s Jim Hoagland argues. “A presidential transition is a unique time in America and holds the promise of opportunity, as well as a possible risk to the nation’s security interests,” a CRS Report judges — while James Jay Carafano states in a FOX News essay that “DHS isn’t the only place where homeland security transitions are critical. What happens in White House policy shops is just as important.”

State and local: Boston subway police checked passengers’ bags last Thursday in a routine terror alert exercise, The Boston Herald relays — while The Press of Atlantic City has the convention center there hosting “what is being billed as the largest homeland security drill in southern New Jersey history,” and Newsday has hundreds of Long Island responders rehearsing against a supposedly biker-gang-detonated dirty bomb. Arizona’s U.S. Attorney’s Office is getting 21 additional prosecutors as part of Justice’s mounting campaign against border-related crime, The Arizona Daily Star says. Missouri pols are wrestling with “a question: Is Gov. Matt Blunt’s proposal to build a statewide wireless radio network vital to public safety or a blank check for high-tech vendors?” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch spotlights — while The Shreveport Times focuses on how Louisiana’s new homeland chief is confronting the same comm issues.

Chasing the dime: Industry groups spent some $12.5 million on 238 lobbyists last year to weaken DHS chemical security regs, Politico has Greenpeace reporting. The thesis of “McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld” (Random House) “is clear, compelling, and scary: the West may have declared war on terrorism, but organized crime is by far the more serious threat,” The Christian Science Monitor reviews. Radical Islamists not only want to destroy America with bombs, they also are infiltrating U.S. financial markets and influencing the flow of credit and capital, Cybercast News Service finds the Center for Security Policy alleging. A Georgia munitions maker was indicted last week for allegedly selling faulty “stun” grenades to the FBI, CNN notes.

Bugs ‘n bombs: Ohio authorities have arrested a man they say e-mailed an Indiana teenager about doing a Columbine on two schools this Sept. 11, The Toledo Blade relays — as 1011 News has an Omaha man arrested for repeatedly calling 911 and “threatening to kill President Bush, blow up downtown Omaha and the world.” Grand Forks Air Force Base suffered a false alert when a piece of scanned mail set of an explosives sensor, KFYR-TV 5 relates, while NBC 10 has Philly police seeking a stolen portable nuclear gauge. The “overpowering bad odor” that prompted a hazmat response to and evacuation of a Connecticut bank branch was traced to a literally “bad check” that reeked, The Danbury News-Times says. “The next time Islamist terrorists attack us it could be with a nuclear weapon. Am I ‘fear mongering’ by saying that? If so, I’m in good company,” a National Review columnist contends. The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a resolution Friday urging, sensibly, that WMDs be kept out of the hands of terrorists and black marketeers, The Seattle Times relays.

Coming and going: A pending new hydraulic barrier security system could have prevented Friday’s breach when an elderly man drove onto the Miami airport runway, the Tribunetells — while The Bakersfield Californianhas Hong Kong-L.A. passengers duct-taping a man to his seat after he attacked a United attendant. In one of a series of routine sweeps, TSA officers and bomb-sniffing dogs descended on Providence’s rail station Friday, WPRI reports. Houston’s transit system police chief urged Congress on Friday to help cities avoid transportation system terror strikes, the Chronicle recounts. Seven captured pirates face the death penalty in Somalia, The New York Times blogs — while Reuters has France and the United States drafting a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing countries to fight piracy, and The Sun tabloid bleats that “Britain’s 18,000 merchant sailors face a growing danger from pirates with links to al Qaeda.”

Border wars: As DHS finalizes its crackdown on employers of illegal immigrants, business groups and rights advocates hammer at what they term “an ill-conceived attack on legitimate workers and their employers,” The San Francisco Chronicle recounts — whileAP has a Chamber of Commerce-commissioned study pegging the cost to employers at more than $1 billion a year, plus billions in lost wages for legal workers. A planned new version of the just-installed, just-junked virtual fence “will have improved technology and infrastructure and is expected to perform better,” Federal Times is told.

Courts and rights: An ex-Muslim school teacher was resentenced in Virginia to 15 years for abetting a Pakistani terror group, despite an appeals court’s directive to reconsider the original sentence, The Newport News Daily Press relays. A defense attorney met last Thursday with confessed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for the first time at Guantanamo, AP reports. Defense counsels are charging that Gitmo’s “climate-controlled isolation is a breeding ground for madness,” hampering their clients’ ability to assist in their own defense, The New York Times spotlights. “When military prosecutors enter Guantanamo’s heavily guarded courtroom Monday, they can expect to face a spectacle: their former boss, in uniform, testifying against them,” The Wall Street Journal leads.

Qaeda Qorner: An al Qaeda-linked Web site has posted a 10-minute film showing civilians killed or maimed in U.S. and Israeli air strikes as an answer to a Dutch anti-Koran film last month, Reuters reports — while another Reuters item has new book examining Osama bin Laden through the prism of his family suggesting that the 1988 plane-crash death of a playboy brother was an important factor in his radicalization. A man suspected of al Qaeda links managed last year to secure a visa to live in Canada, CBC learns. “Bands of Islamist fighters, terrorist trainers and arms suppliers roaming the mountainous southern Sahara Desert are new targets in the U.S. war against al Qaeda, Bloomberg leads — as AP has Algerian soldiers killing 10 armed Islamists allegedly planning a “spectacular operation” in the name of al Qaeda.

Over there: The United States and Britain issued new travel alerts warning of an increased terrorist threat in China, as Interpol forecast a possible al Qaeda attack at the Olympics, The Australian informs.British cops were given extra time to question three men arrested last week under the Terrorism Act in East London, Sky News notes. “The State Department plans to double student visas issued to young Saudi men. This time, it says, they’ll all be vetted for terror ties. Uh-huh,” Investor’s Business Daily snarks. In Pakistan, Islamic militants have spread beyond their tribal bases, and now “have the run of an unstable, nuclear-armed nation,” Time Magazine monitors.

Slumping Jack Flash: “Calling it the most effective tool to date in the War on Terror, the Pentagon announced Monday that it had developed a new chemical weapon called ‘ennui gas,’ a nerve agent that overwhelms its victims with sudden philosophical distress over the meaningless tedium of human life and a sinking sense that everything they have ever accomplished ultimately amounts to dust,” The Onion reports. “’When the enemy inhales the gas, he will immediately retreat to his bedroom, lock the door, stare at the ceiling, pick idly at his fingernails, and muse upon the similarities between fingernails and the fragility of life,’ Defense Secretary Robert Gates said. Recently disclosed Pentagon documents indicate that the gas has a dissemination radius of four to eight miles, and that neither protective masks nor a positive outlook on life can prevent infection. Symptoms include uncontrollable sighing, repeated utterances of the phrase ‘What’s the use?’ a confusion and bitterness regarding one’s place in the universe, and an increased proclivity to listen to Lou Reed records.”