It is “troubling” that the administration and its allies worry about excessive congressional oversight only “now that Democrats are uncovering the shortcomings of the president’s approach to homeland security,” House homeland chief Bennie Thompson writes to The New York Times. “Recent events involving DHS — a CNN reporter watch-listed and a former federal air marshal being threatened with obstruction of justice — are enough to make one ask: Has the TSA been watching too much mob TV?” security maven Annie Jacobsen jabs on The International Analyst Network.

Feds: DHS’s Mike Chertoff has alienated “many Texans along the U.S.-Mexico border with his . . . unyielding push to construct 670 miles of border fencing by the end of the year,” The Houston Chronicle’s Stewart M. Powell surveys. In an e-mail interview with The Washington Times’ Ben Conery, FBI chief Robert Mueller discusses the 100-year-old bureau’s post-9/11 challenges, not least balancing traditional criminal concerns and homeland security demands. It’s apparently not easy to get yourself off TSA’s terror watch list once you are on it, Consortium News’ Ivan Eland surveys. “Congress risks a grave error in creating a parallel system of terrorism courts unmoored from the constitutional values that have served our country so well for so long,” federal judge John C. Coughenour comments in The Washington Post — and see a New York Times editorial.

Poly-ticks: On border control, the views of both candidates evoke “lots of good will among pro-immigration activists, but not much from hard-liners,” McClatchy Newspapers’ David Lightman judges. (Working damage control, relatedly, a Delaware GOP gubernatorial candidate says he no longer believes in driver’s licenses for illegals as he had proposed last Tuesday, The Wilmington News Journal’s Beth Miller notes.) “Obama concedes that America’s troops have contributed to improvements on the ground in Iraq, but he still stands by his vote against the surge. Why not just admit that he was wrong?” The Houston Chronicle’s Kathleen Parker protests. “Both Obama and McCain seem to have a piece of the truth about Iraq, but Obama’s truth [is] larger and more strategic,” Time Magazine’s Joe Klein concludes. Obama’s whirlwind world tour last week “strikes directly at McCain’s one area of strength,” his purportedly greater command readiness, Bob Burnett judges in OpEdNews.

McBama: An Army officer whose e-mail claiming Obama “blew off” serving soldiers during last week’s Afghanistan visit has caused a stir has withdrawn his assertions, Army Times tells. Obama surrogates are ragging McCain for last week’s reference to Iraq “as the first major conflict since 9/11,” oddly overlooking Afghanistan, Political Intelligence reports — and see The Raw Story on CBS apparently editing this misstatement from its broadcast. When Obama proclaimed in Berlin that “the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another,” he dodged the real point, The Weekly Standard says: “A terrorist setting off a nuclear bomb in London — that’s a danger. A revolution in Islamabad — that’s a danger.” Terrorism poses a “transcendent threat” only if it goes nuclear, “but McCain has not stressed nonproliferation as the central theme of his foreign policy, as Obama . . . did in Berlin,” Newsweek noodles.

Uncle Sugar: Because of “high-risk urban areas” in Hartford and Bridgeport, Connecticut is looking good in the DHS grants announced Friday, The Hartford Courant recounts — while The Democrat and Chronicle sees first-time recipient Rochester thrilled with its measly $1.5 million. “This is no time to cut homeland security funding for our urban areas,” Sen. Frank Lautenberg complains — via PolitickerNJ — of New Jersey’s grant allotment, and the Postaudits mounting debate whether these funds “come at the expense of other law enforcement priorities that some say are more urgent.” New York’s response coordinating 9/11 United Services Group closed for good this month, one of several disaster programs affected by budget cuts, The New York Times tells.

State and local: The Maryland State Police superintendent terms himself “troubled” by his agency’s “poor judgment” in infiltrating activist groups, though other officers defend the effort, The Baltimore Sun says. “Colorado’s record in spending [DHS] grants has hardly been exemplary,” The Rocky Mountain News notes, seeking “transparency” on city plans to invest $18.2 million in Dem convention security. With patriotic fanfare, Florida lawmakers set aside $5 million in 2005 to help families of deployed Guard and Reserve troops, but just $606,907 has been paid out to 172 families, The St. Petersburg Times tells. West Virginia emergency officials are looking into problems reported with new digital radio systems, The Charleston Gazette relates — while The Sioux Falls (S.D.) Argus sees state homeland monies being invested in disaster comm capabilities statewide.

Home(land) economics: New poll numbers provide the latest confirmation of how the economy dominates security this election cycle, The Associated Press reports. (Albeit with little less panic: “Instead of rational assessment, a sense of fear and anxiety pervades,” a spiked columnist contends in re: reaction to the economic downturn.) “As a federal court decision nears that could require employers to verify workers’ Social Security numbers, Oregon employers and economists are trying to gauge the possible economic impacts,” The Oregonian relates.

Masters of disaster:FEMA is in a bit of a face-off with D.C. engineers over an outmoded flood-control system that threatens to inundate portions of the capital in 10 feet of water in a major storm, AP reports — while Facing South decries CBP’s border fence construction which “not only makes levee failures more likely in the short term but could also worsen future flooding,” and The Washington Timeshas DHS insisting it is working with “willing” border communities “to meet their security and flood protection needs.” Despite the devastation Katrina and Rita wrought on Louisiana, a large number of coasties still say they wouldn’t evacuate before another hurricane, The Baton Rouge Advocate learns. “There’s concern that the U.S. government may be competing with consumers for stocks of storable food,” the always-anxious WorldNetDaily frets.

Air turbulence: A bogus tip about a bomb-toting passenger cleared a Long Island air terminal Friday morning, Newsday notes — as ABC News reports “no sign” that a bomb caused the gaping hole in the fuselage of an airborne Qantas 747 on Saturday. The pilot whose gun discharged in the cockpit last March has been canned by US Airways and removed from TSA’s armed pilot program, McClatchy-Tribune tells. A California rapper faces federal charges after Sacramento airport screeners detected 6,000 ecstasy pills on his person, The San Francisco Chronicle recounts. “A new program at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport will try to make waiting in security lines a little less agonizing,” with volunteers on hand to answer questions, The North Andover Eagle-Tribune tells.

Courts and rights: The name of the Central Intelligence Agency cannot be spoken in the Guantanamo war crimes trial, the Los Angeles Times spotlights. The tribunal charges against Osama bin Laden’s driver are a “vast net” having him playing a part, however small, in a terror conspiracy predating even the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, the Times tells — while AP says he gave “detailed, insider knowledge” to U.S. agents only to see his words used against him now. The Pentagon’s chief goal in the current terror tribunal “is a smoothly run, credible trial, with few theatrics, that results in an easy conviction,” the Post propounds. A Qatari detainee — a brother of the lone enemy combatant still held in the United States — has been released from Guantanamo and repatriated, The Miami Herald relays.

Over there: At least 45 people were killed when up to 16 small blasts tore through Ahmedabad on Saturday, Bloombergreports — while The Hindu covers another series of similar blasts in Bangalore on Friday, and NDTV has the little-known Indian Mujahedeen claiming responsibility for them all. Two bombs also exploded in Istanbul last night leaving at least 14 people dead, Agence France-Presse reports. Chinese citizens have allegedly welcomed a new government coping-with-terror manual, available on the Internet and at some police stations, China Daily recounts — as The Shanghai Daily has Beijing dismissing terror claims and threats issued by the so-called Turkistan Islamic Party. Pakistan’s P.M. vowed Saturday to fight terrorism as he headed to the United States to meet President Bush, Agence France-Presse relates.

Qaeda Qorner: “Global jihad elements are working to recruit European and American nationals who have been indoctrinated with radical Islamic ideology to carry out attacks inside Israel,” The Jerusalem Post is told. Al Qaeda allies running terror camps for tots on the Afghan-Pakistan border are using video of a boy “martyred” in combat to recruit jihadis, The New York Daily News notes. (Pakistani youngsters recruited by the Taliban are paid $9 a day to become jihadis, while would-be “martyrs” get the princely sum of $120, a Washington Times columnist adds.) A Turkish radical group and al Qaeda are believed behind the July 9 attack on the U.S. consulate in Istanbul, Asia Times says.

Just not funny, Part II: “Drawing an enormous amount of political flack for their last satirical cover — Barack Obama and his wife in radical garb bumping knuckles in the Oval Office as a flag burns in the fireplace and Osama bin Laden gazes down from a portrait — The New Yorker had planned for next week’s cover to feature John McCain and his wife,” The Spoofspoofs. “However, fearing that, that satire would catch more of the same (only from the Right), the magazine has canceled next week’s ‘Manchurian Candidate McCain’ cover, Robert W. Armijo writes. Apparently McCain was to be featured dressed in a leather silver-studded teddy being brainwashed in an S&M-like dungeon setting. His mouth is gagged with a copy of the Patriot Act, his hands and feet bound together with a coarse cord (marked made in China), while Cindy McCain dressed as dominatrix reads passages from Mao’s Little Red Book. All the while, a copy of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is burning on an open fire in the background.”