By David C. Morrison, Special to Congressional Quarterly

TSA has been unable to keep track of all the airport security uniforms and badges it issues, leaving airport secure areas vulnerable to terrorists posing as authorized officials, The Associated Press’ Eileen Sullivan quotes DHS’s IG — and check the agency’s dissenting response. FEMA has ended its bid to recoup $1.1 million paid to the Cajundome for sheltering evacuees during hurricanes Katrina and Rita, The Baton Rouge Advocate’s Richard Burgess relates.

Feds: The attempt to retroactively immunize telecoms that helped the NSA’s warrantless spying program violates the Constitution, Threat Level’s Ryan Singel has a rights group arguing in court last week. It is not every day that a government agency beats a congressional target, but four full months before its first Hill deadline, the TSA says it is screening all cargo on narrow-body passenger jets, Homeland Security Daily Wire relates. DHS has ineffective security controls for portable electronic storage devices such as flash drives, Government Executive’s Gautham Nagesh cites from another IG report — while CNET News’ Jon Oltsik reminds that “the new president and Congress have an obligation to figure out how to proceed with a strategic plan for IT and information security.”

Looking forward: “Officials from both campaigns have been asked to briefings after warnings from U.S. intelligence that terrorists and rogue states will seek to exploit the power vacuum following November’s presidential election,” The Daily Telegraph’s Tim Shipman leads. Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano could be appointed DHS boss if Obama defeats McCain, “sources familiar with the situation” tell The Phoenix Business Journal’s Mike Sunnucks — and check Glenn Spencer’s dire American Patrol Report take. The Latino rights honcho wants DHS run by a chief who will agree to halt immigration raids during the 2010 Census, but Napolitano is on record as opposing such a move, The East Valley Tribune adds. Neither candidate has a comprehensive plan for the nation’s infrastructure needs, McClatchy Newspaper’s David Goldstein surveys — while CQ’s Daniel Fowler suggests their “deafening silence on homeland security has a logical explanation: voters have no particular policy preferences on the topic, so there’s no advantage in being specific.”

Poly-ticks: In the latest paranoid ping from the blogospheric depths, an AfterDowningStreetposter says “a friend was told by another friend at a high level in DHS to ‘stay home on Election Day.’” A Nevada Republican Party mail piece that accuses Obama of having “close ties to [a] domestic terrorist” is reckless and inflammatory, The Las Vegas Sun is told by “historians.” Another October surprise like the 2004 Osama bin Laden tape “could knock Obama off the path to victory,” a Huffington Post poster predicts. His family firm’s use — or not — of DHS’s E-Verify to ensure its workers’ legality has become a bone of contention in the reelection bid of Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., AP relates — while CaribWorldNewscomplains that immigration reform has not been fodder for the debates, and see a Washington Post op-ed decrying the resulting “policy vacuum.”

State and local: A candidate for Ohio attorney general charges that “using the specter of 9/11,” the state homeland security office “intends to regulate heavily all the private proprietary security operations throughout the state,” The Toledo Blade reports. Securing a Maine driver’s license is going to take a lot longer beginning next month when applicants will be required to prove their legal residency, The Bangor Daily News notes — while The Minneapolis Star Tribunereports Minnesota’s Secretary of State saying confusion over DHS rules had prevented his office from using driver’s license info to cross-check for voter fraud. Long Island police, meantime, yesterday arrested three teens for allegedly defacing a memorial to a 9/11 victim, Newsday notes.

Bugs ‘n bombs: Discovery of a food powder in a restroom at the Bloomington, Ill., Social Security Administration office prompted a contamination scare and building evacuation, The Pantagraphreports. The FBI’s Philadelphia division, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Regional Task Force last week jointly conducted a daylong agro-terrorism response exercise, The Philadelphia Daily News notes. “What is the leading cause of death in the country? Murder? Terrorist attacks? Anthrax? Actually, the leading causes — heart disease and cancer — aren’t very exciting,” Youth Radio broadcasts. Marking 100 years of the breed, the Doberman Pinscher Club of America signed a contract with DHS “to secure American working dogs to protect America,” Topeka’s KTKA 49 News notes.

I am woman, hear me roar: “Attacks carried out by female suicide bombers have become as common an occurrence [in Iraq] as roadside bombings, political assassinations and public mourning,” NBC News spotlights — while Agence France-Presse has Iraqi police shooting dead a woman on Saturday on suspicion of preparing a suicide attack on a Sunni zone checkpoint, and The World Bulletinfinds a would-be female suicidalist being arrested in Turkey. “Why do women in Sri Lanka feel they need to choose death over life to assert their power?” The WIP asks in a piece on female Liberation Tigers suicide bombers. There is a ceasefire in Gaza, but BBC News finds evidence one group, Islamic Jihad, is training female suicide bombers. See, relatedly, Cleveland Independent Media for an astonishingly lengthy roster of “Islamic terror attacks for the past two months.”

Coming and going: “Do we really have to show the TSA what we otherwise reserve for our spouses and personal physicians in order to fly? These machines should not be used for random screenings. They are too invasive,” a St. Petersburg Times columnist accuses of whole-body scanning. At a time when airport security bristles even at hand lotion, “one traveler managed twice to get pistols and shotguns through a phalanx of security personnel and on a plane from Logan Airport to the Middle East,” The Boston Globe reports — while The Times of London reports replica bombs being smuggled past security screeners at Britain’s second busiest airport. Airlines fret that travelers may be caught out by new DHS rules requiring them to get online authorization before coming to the United States, The Australian informs. “A close working relationship among the different security entities makes the complicated process of getting thousands of passengers and their luggage through airports safely possible,” Security Director News spotlights.

Courts and rights: Information surfacing about two informants all but guarantees they will be in the hot seat nearly as much as the defendants during the Fort Dix terror trial starting today, along with their FBI handlers, the Los Angeles Times tells. A Long Island judge Saturday denied bail to a Las Vegas man who tried to board a plane with a pipe bomb, knife, a bag of marijuana and an array of suspicious electronics, AP reports. A former Holy Land Foundation fund-raiser testified in the Dallas terror finance retrial Friday that money collected went to Palestinian charities controlled by Hamas, The Dallas Morning News notes. A Tamil Tiger operative in Canadian custody has 30 days to appeal a judge’s order he be extradited to the United States on arms charges, The Mississauga (Ont.) News mentions. New FBI terror-probe guidelines “are a chilling invitation for the government to spy on law-abiding Americans based on their ethnic background or political activity, The New York Times chides.

Over there: The border city of Ciudad Juarez scouring Mexico for police recruits and will keep 175 formerly-drug-using officers as it tries to replace nearly half a force gutted by firings and retirements, AP reports. China is imposing intricate regulations on practicing Muslims in the autonomous Xinjiang region in an effort to control Islam’s spread, the Times surveys. An Indonesian imam linked to the three extremists awaiting execution for the Bali bombings tells AFP that the 2002 attack which killed more than 200 people was the work of the CIA — as The Press Association sees a Moroccan court convicting 47 people and sentencing them to up to 30 years in prison over last year’s Casablanca internet cafe bombing.

Qaeda Qorner: A missile attack from a remotely piloted American aircraft is believed to have killed a senior al Qaedaite in Pakistan’s South Waziristan last week, the Times tells. The Al-Udaim desert is one of the last refuges of al-Qaeda-in-Iraq fighters, who the U.S. Army and Iraqi authorities say are increasingly on the defensive, AFP spotlights. “Where did al-Qaeda-in-Iraq go wrong?” a Post piece asks, turning to a political scientist who argues that al Qaeda affiliates “by their nature, tend to alienate their hosts.” Four of the five main online forums that al Qaeda’s media wing uses to distribute statements by Osama bin Laden and other extremists have been disabled since mid-September, the Post also relates — as AP has al Qaeda denying “the fall of some of the headquarters of these networks into the hands of the enemy.” A link between terrorism plots and hardcore child pornography — coded messages in the images — is becoming clear after a string of police raids in Britain and Spain, a Times of Londoninvestigation suggests.

Yes, please, more fear itself: “In a nationally televised address to the American people, President Bush called upon every man, woman, and child to spiral uncontrollably downward into complete and utter panic,” The Onion reports. “Speaking shortly before shaving his head and soaking the Oval Office in his own urine, Bush assured citizens that in these times of great uncertainty, the best and only course of action is to come under the throes of a sudden, overwhelming fear marked by hysterical or irrational behavior. ‘My fellow Americans, the time for running aimlessly through streets while shrieking and waving our arms above our heads is now,’ Bush said. ‘I understand that many of you are worried about your economic future and our situation overseas, and you have every right to be. Yet there is only one thing we as a nation can do in times like these: give up all hope and devolve into a lawless, post-apocalyptic, every-man-for-himself society.’”