By David C. Morrison, Special to Congressional Quarterly

Veep Dick Cheney yesterday prodded Congress to extend and broaden a sun-setting surveillance law, saying “fighting the war on terror is a long-term enterprise” that should not come with an expiration date, The Associated Press’ Tom Raum reports. The Senate, meanwhile, began debating whether to grant legal immunity to telephone companies for assisting in warrantless wiretaps of terrorism suspects, The Washington Post’s Dan Eggen recounts.

Feds: President Bush issued an order yesterday to clarify procedures for a new law strengthening national security reviews of foreign deals, Reuters’ Rachelle Younglai relates. Sixteen airbases across the country are finalists in a competition “to become the nation’s headquarters in the fight against cyberterrorism” as hosts of the Air Force’s Cyber Command HQ, The Biloxi Sun Herald’s Mary Perez recounts. Mexican authorities say they have arrested a man in northern Mexico in the weekend killing of a Border Patrol agent, AP’s E. Eduardo Castillo relates.

Poly-tics: A floundering Rudy Giuliani highlights his support for a national catastrophic fund, which has helped distinguish him in the competitive GOP field in Florida, where he is gambling his political future, The Miami Herald’s Oscar Corral recounts — and see The Wall Street Journal on the “panhandle pander.” GOPers are drawn to John McCain “by his strong stance on the War on Terrorism [but he] is a suicidal choice for Republicans, because on every issue other than the war, he stands for capitulation to the left,” Robert Tracinski rallies in RealClearPolitics. In recent polls, California GOP voters rank illegal immigration and terror as top concerns (40 percent and 37 percent, respectively), whereas only 27 percent of California Dems mention border security, and 17 percent terrorism, The San Diego Union-Tribune’s John Marelius tells.

By any other name: “Giuliani’s standing in the polls has dropped dramatically in recent months as his anti-Muslim stances and statements have multiplied,” The American Muslim somewhat solipsistically assesses. Dem underdog John Edwards is “embracing” the leader of the American Muslim Council, “whose founder is in prison after pleading guilty to violating anti-terror legislation,” Steve Emerson slams in IPT News. Hillary Clinton hasn’t hesitated to suggest “that the new president might quickly face another terrorist attack on American soil, as part of her quest to convince voters they need her cool-headed experience,” James Ridgeway and Jean Casella recount in Mother Jones. The Democratic primaries have proved “the invasion of Iraq was judged by Allah to be a failure [and that] America needs to stop letting its foreign policy be dictated by the Zionists,” WorldNetDaily’s Aaron Klein quotes an Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade deputy.

State and local: A city parks board appointee has resigned after her controversial membership in the virulently anti-immigration Minuteman Civil Defense Corps led two organizations to take their annual conventions elsewhere, The Kansas City Star says. Texas’s AG has conditionally approved a state plan for driver’s licenses that electronically store citizenship info for expedited border crossings, The Austin American Statesman mentions — while The El Paso Timesreveals DHS pleas with Gov. Rick Perry get on-board the Real ID wagon, and The Dallas Morning News explores anxieties about a new law allowing Texans to carry guns in their cars, even without a concealed handgun license.

Bugs ‘n bombs: Described as “unprecedented,” security for the Feb. 3 Super Bowl in Phoenix “will include both covert and overt measures like ATF bomb-sniffing dogs trained to ferret out liquid explosives,” HSToday recaps. The Pentagon’s Joint Forces and Northern commands plan a series of computer-based disaster drills with four states for this year’s Noble Resolve preparedness exercises, Government Computer News notes. In Iraq, meanwhile, a hundred-man Army unit is using an array of drones, surveillance planes, choppers and video downlinks to kill 2,400 bomb-planters and capture 141 more, Danger Room reports.North Korea cannot be taken off the list of state sponsors of terrorism until it has made a full declaration on its suspect nuclear activities, Agence France-Presse quotes the White House.

Ivory (Watch) Towers: “I’m learning that homeland security is about a lot more than just terrorist attacks. It’s also about daily life, safety and responsibility,” a freshman at Maryland’s “homeland security high” tells the Baltimore Sun. (“As if high school weren’t terrifying enough,” American Samizdatgently kibitzes.) Proponents see homeland security degree programs “as a way to stimulate Michigan’s economy and help the state move from a heavy manufacturing economy to a knowledge-based economy,” Our Michigan discusses. At the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College, faced with having their jointly managed campus split by DHS’s border fence, “expressions of concern have now turned to formal opposition,” Inside Higher Ed informs.

The air up there: A man alerted TSA officials early Sunday morning that he had gotten through Reagan National’s main security checkpoint with a handgun, Fox 5 Newsnotes. TSAers this week began collecting 10 fingerprints per overseas visitor arriving at Boston Logan, an upgrade from 2-fingerprint IDs that should be nationwide by year’s end, AP reports. “The newest tool at airport security checkpoints is 3 inches long and costs only a few dollars: a handheld black light,” USA Today notes of TSA efforts to weed out phony IDs. “The card that helps you clear airport security in about four minutes is now much easier to get,” a News9 broadcast says, hailing the Clear enrollment station now in business at Denver’s Grand Hyatt. A former Raleigh police chief has been installed as the new TSA director at Charlotte’s airport, the Observer observes.

Courts and rights: A federal appeals court tossed out a 15-year sentence given to a Virginia man convicted of supporting a Pakistani terrorist organization, ruling Wednesday that the trial judge made an erroneous assumption, ABC 7 News relates. A Toledo federal court is questioning potential jurors in readiness for the March 4 trial of three area terror defendants, the Blade relates — while AP has jury selection underway for the retrial of six Florida men charged with conspiring to destroy Chicago’s Sears Tower. A Florida student from Morocco pleaded not guilty Tuesday to a federal gun charge levied after FBI agents found pictures of him holding a gun for two fellow students up on explosives charges, The Tampa Tribune tells. Don’t be surprised by Jose Padilla’s 17-year sentence; the evidence “was paltry, at best, and certainly did not support the life sentence (or even the 30-year sentence) that government officials had been pitching,” a CBS News analysis summarizes.

Over there: Disparaging any manhunt for al Qaeda leaders as pointless, Pakistan’s president said Tuesday that Osama bin Laden is less of a threat to his regime than the Taliban running roughshod over part of his country, The News notes — while AP has an administration official venting dissatisfaction with the quality of info it’s getting about jihadis operating in Pakistan’s volatile tribal area. Extensive intel has allowed coalition forces to push al Qaeda out of numerous Iraqi provinces, but a top commander stays cautious, “saying the terrorist group’s ability to re-emerge is constant,” The Washington Timestells. Afghanistan’s president warned the World Economic Forum in Switzerland yesterday that the whole world could suffer from the “wildfire” of terrorism engulfing his region, The Voice of America mentions.

Over here: “Sleeper cells are walking around the infidels’ land using different cover methods and white names that don’t attract American internal security’s attention, but . . . it’s al Qaeda’s lone wolves that disrupt [the FBI’s],” The Jamestown Foundation quotes a jihadi Web posting. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has backed off on its defense of two Muslim college students caught driving with explosives and a how-to video on bomb-making, WorldNetDaily relates. Concerns about the safety of serving Muslim military personnel arose after it emerged that their personal details were among those of 600,000 people held on a filched Royal Navy laptop, The Sunday Times tells. Releasing updated guidelines, British university leaders agree to inform the police of any extremist behavior by students or visiting speakers they suspect may lead to terrorism, The Guardian reports — while AP has U.K. police offering to train the academics.

Holy Wars: “How does a single individual go from standing on a street corner to flicking a switch and blowing himself up? The question is superficially simple. The answers are not,” The Observerexplores in a two-partseries. “Jihad doctrine; Shariah (Islamic law); designs for a global caliphate through jihad (terrorism) and the spread of Shariah (Islamization): We pretend they are not factors in the free world’s experience with Islam,” a Washington Times columnist waxes wroth. “Nowadays, quite a few Islamic religious leaders issue fatwas against Westerners—or moderate Muslims—thus energizing the people against other nations, in a battle resembling the one between light and darkness in Manichaeism,” a Worldpress.org essay asserts. A Palestinian resistance group gaining strength on the West Bank “sounds like Hamas — or even al Qaeda — but doesn’t support suicide bombings or secret militias,” The Christian Science Monitor profiles.

The people’s business, black, two sugars: “Citing a need to finally reach consensus on the country’s most pressing political matters and a desire to foster a healthy, open environment for drafting new legislation, the U.S. Senate held its first-ever brainstorming session Tuesday at Cafe Karma, a funky little coffee shop near the Capitol Building,” The Onion reports. “Because Cafe Karma—a favorite meeting place for musicians, poets, and visual artists in the area—offers 50-cent refills and features large, comfortable chairs, senators on both sides of the aisle considered it a natural venue for overcoming hurdles on a number of controversial issues. One free-association exercise led by Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, led to a bipartisan, comprehensive new proposal for stem-cell research that features an accompanying theme song . . . Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said that the success of the special session, in which more than 327 new proposed laws were conceived, including 68 by Kennedy himself, was the fact that it had fresher coffee and fewer restrictions than a normal legislative session.”