“This is a logical place for people to invest homeland dollars,” said James Dyer, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbyist who is representing Vornado Realty Trust and the Related Companies, the two firms that formed a joint venture to redevelop the Farley Post Office into Moynihan Station. “Anytime you have a station carrying more people through it that go through the airports at any one time, you obviously are going to have security concerns.”

The developers paid Mr. Dyer’s firm, Clark & Weinstock, $220,000 in the first half of the year to lobby the Department of Homeland Security as well as other more obvious targets, such as Amtrak and the Department of Transportation, according to federal lobbying records.

The $865 million proposed conversion of the Farley Post Office, at 33rd Street and Eighth Avenue, into a train station had been fully funded when the Pataki administration approved it last year. But that proposal was never finalized because the developers proposed a far broader, and expensive, plan that involves moving Madison Square Garden and redoing Penn Station underneath.

The new Penn Station, dubbed Moynihan East, could cost as much as $2 billion, according to rough estimates. In addition to the $450 million that the developers have reportedly committed, the state is expected to contribute more and also seek funds from the city and the federal government, including the Homeland Security Department. The fund amounts aren’t yet clear.

“We do believe that we can make the case that federal transportation funding, homeland security funding and historic preservation tax credits are all appropriate sources of funding for this project,” Patrick J. Foye, the co-chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, said. “I think with 550,000 New York and New Jersey residents going through this facility every day as a key regional and national transportation hub, that it would be entirely appropriate for the federal government to contribute homeland security funds.”

Tom Schatz, the president of Citizens Against Government Waste, a private nonpartisan watchdog organization based in Washington, said that the lobbying activity at the federal level indicates that the developers are seeking special earmarks for the project. The Homeland Security Department gives to few of these so-called pork projects, he said, distributing its money instead in lump sums to states and cities to divvy up, or to particular types of security operations, such as screening cargo that arrives by ship.

Mr. Schatz said that it would distort the purpose of homeland security funding if money was used to build a new train station.

“After the facility is completed, there might be some money available for security operations,” he said. “But if [the] Homeland Security [Department] becomes a builder and starts supporting construction, almost anything can be built with homeland security money. That is a big concern because that takes money away from causes that are more crucial for protecting homeland security, such as protecting the ports, protecting the borders, screening passengers in airports.”

They're debating tonight on Long Island and Mejias's campaign is planning to post a video of the debate on their website tomorrow (barring any tech issues). King and Mejias already debated this morning, to air on Nov. 2 at 4 p.m. on News 12.

What's interesting about this race is that King is the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, a posting that was a source of great strength when he first got it, but that has become an asset of more dubious local value since the Dubai-port security deal and the Republican-led cutbacks in anti-terror funding to New York.

But part of the reason New York Democrats haven't made more noise about this race may be that Mejias was an early supporter of Tom Suozzi -- not something that has ingratiated him with the Spitzer-worshiping establishment.

I asked Mejias on the phone earlier he felt that any state Democrats might have continued to hold that against him.

"Like the Democrats inner circle?" he asked. "They may have, but I can't answer for them."

-- Azi Paybarah

“I believe that illegal immigrants who have roots in our country and want to stay should … learn English,” he said and then, in case you didn’t get it: “Americans are bound together by our shared ideals, an appreciation of our history, respect for the flag we fly, and an ability to speak and write the English language. English is also the key to unlocking the opportunity of America. English allows newcomers to go from picking crops to opening a grocery … from cleaning offices to running offices … from a life of low-paying jobs to a diploma, a career and a home of their own.”

We do not know how many uninvited guests we have, and we have even less of a grasp of how many do not speak English. But if a walk around many American communities is any guide, the numbers are very large. Regardless of exactly how many millions cannot speak the language of Chaucer, Milton, Swift and Snoop Doggy Dogg, there’s a contradiction in what the President says that he evidently does not see or does not wish to discuss in public.

Most of us well-established Anglophones have no particular interest in Mexicans getting diplomas, careers and homes of their own; we’re interested in their cheap labor. An important reason for their labor being cheap is that they cannot speak English. They are isolated and apart from the larger English-speaking labor market. They are less able or not able to get what’s coming to them under the labor laws, both because they are illegals and because they can’t speak the local lingo. Once they can speak English, they are immediately less tractable—so, fancy talk aside, it’s not in the interest of those who benefit from the low wages paid the non-English-speaking workers to teach them anything.

But what price cheap labor? Implicit in the President’s remarks is the fear of a large body of non-English speakers harboring other loyalties, other beliefs and, conceivably, other political objectives than those of the here-first Americans. It’s a puzzle: If they learn English and integrate, they will charge what everybody else charges for their labor, but if they remain apart, working for scraps and scrapings, they will remain distant, somewhat mysterious and possibly even dangerous.

In many jurisdictions, English classes are available for immigrants, the legal ones at least. Even where illegals are welcome, it stands to reason that few of the estimated 11 million have the time and energy to attend classes.

In the mid-1930’s, The New Yorker ran a series of stories about “The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N,” an immigrant attending an English class for immigrants. The stories were funny, warmhearted, entertainingly human and, though fiction, tell us much about a time when immigration was down to a trickle and was all legal, and when both the receiving society and the entrants were on the same page. The newcomers were non-threatening, suitably humble and devoid of the truculent squawkishness of the immigrant-rights professionals now crowding our television screens.

That was then and this is now. Then, there was no job too poorly paid for native-born Americans to do. They’d pick your apples for 75 cents a day and split your kindling for a sandwich and a glass of water. Young people didn’t go to school aiming to be filmmakers, publicists or Wall Street thieves. Cheap native labor abounded; Mexicans were not needed.

It is safe to say that the American appetite for cheap labor won’t be slaked in the near future and that the illegals won’t learn much English. There’s no will for that—and if there were, where are the teachers to come from? Our schools are hard-pressed to find competent teachers for American children, much less for foreign adults.

Another major point in the President’s speech that will not happen: He said employers should be held accountable when they hire illegal immigrants. That’s against the law, he noted. Therefore, he proposed “a new identification card for every legal foreign worker. This card should use biometric technology, such as digital fingerprints, to make it tamperproof.” That would leave businesses with no excuse when they were found to have hired illegals.

The President makes it sound as though businesspeople are being duped daily by wily Mexican fraudsters with fake ID cards. Whether or not the don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy works in the military, it works like a charm at the employment office. Nobody is fooling anybody about anything.

As the President would have it, there’s a way around employer collusion with fake ID’s: the “tamperproof card.” That sounds good—very high-tech—and it would seem the perfect means to force employers into compliance, except for one thing: No reason exists to believe that this government can produce such a card within the next 10 years, during which time another five or six million illegals will have arrived here, doubtless breathless to learn English and study the works of John Locke.

The assertion that there can be no ID card isn’t simply the grumpy effusion of some old curmudgeon. A recent story in The New York Times notes that after investing tens of millions of dollars, the Department of Homeland Security still hasn’t been able to produce a “tamperproof identification card for airport, rail and maritime workers.”

The story goes on to describe how the identification-card program has meandered off into zombie-land, thanks to Harold Rogers, a grafting Kentucky Republican Congressman who owns the Homeland Security Department budget. In a contest between homeland security and free vacations, golf outings and jobs for his relatives, the Congressman sold out his country’s safety. His indifference to making sure that saboteurs don’t infiltrate the nation’s transportation network may be based on his assumption that no Scotch-Irish Presbyterians died on 9/11, but we do not know that for a fact.

Other factors in the Department of Homeland Security have made their contribution toward the card program’s failure. In the end, the lesson is that once again, the federal government didn’t get the job done. If it cannot provide tamperproof identification cards for some 300,000 to 400,000 transportation workers, how in Sam Hill is it going to make and distribute tamperproof cards for millions of non-English-speaking persons whom it knows nothing about? It will not happen. It will never be.

People such as Representative Tom Tancredo, a Colorado Republican, who are most determined to stop immigrants from entering illegally are counting on the card system to do what border patrols cannot. Their hope is that with tamperproof cards, employers aren’t going to take on illegals and will let those whom they now have working for them go. It’s logical, but there will be no card, Congressman.

Graft, boodle, special pleading and nepotism—all the things we look down on the Russians and Egyptians for—decimated the American war effort even before the first fires at Ground Zero were put out. For going on five years, our public figures (and this goes for the Democrats, too) have talked sacrifice and enriched themselves. The lack of urgency, the floating along, the flaccid taking care of No. 1 first, has made a marvelous background contrast to the patriotic persiflage that is the staple of our politics.

One thing we can do: petition the President to appoint a commission to study whether or not the tamperproof card should be Spanish-English or English only. Once we get that worked out, there’s no telling what we can do.

The boy is called Ahmad, and the fervor of his faith is a plausible reaction against his own mixed parentage: His father, who walked out when Ahmad was 3, is Egyptian; his mother, a freckle-faced Irish-American, flaunts a bohemian streak. From age 11, Ahmad has embraced Islam, visiting a humble, makeshift mosque twice a week to study the Qur’an with a Yemeni imam, Shaikh Rashid. Ahmad’s faith is “chosen rather than merely inherited”; his God is “the concrete living God who stands beside [him] as close as the sunshine warming the skin of his neck.” (Allah told the Prophet, “We created man … and We are closer to him than his neck-vein.”) Ahmad has always had “the sense … of God being closer to him than a brother, of himself as a double being half unfolded, like a book with its two sets of pages bound together, odd and even, read and unread.”

Jack Levy, a 63-year-old high-school guidance counselor and a lapsed Jew, depressed and lacking all conviction (“was there any right path?” he wonders), is the counterpoint to young Ahmad’s passionate intensity. Jack, who thinks Ahmad should go to college instead of learning to drive a truck, is a character straight out of Roth or Bellow—“this lugubrious, boringly well-intentioned, stale-smelling man” is how Ahmad’s mother thinks of him. Peculiarly, he’s less convincing than Ahmad: The aging Jew is an impersonation (Bech reduced to a schlub); the fastidious young Muslim, with his crisp white shirt and black stovepipe jeans, is someone Mr. Updike had to invent from scratch, a vigorous, whole-hearted creative effort.

At the invitation of a classmate who sings in the choir, Ahmad attends a Sunday-morning service at a New Prospect church with a predominantly African-American congregation. Shown to a pew, he’s right away disoriented: “Accustomed to worshippers squatting and kneeling on a floor, emphasizing God’s height above them, Ahmad feels, even seated, dizzily, blasphemously tall. The Christian attitude of lazily sitting erect as at an entertainment suggests that God is an entertainer who, when He ceases to entertain, can be removed from the stage, and another act brought on.” And it is, indeed, a terrific show—a slam-bam sermon followed by the choir’s gospel extravaganza. Brilliantly executed, the 15-page scene spotlights both Ahmad’s effectiveness as a character and Mr. Updike’s well-established talent for dramatizing the mysteries of faith—having brushed up his Islam, he’s now effortlessly adept at yet another branch of comparative religious studies.

THOUGH NATIVE-BORN, AHMAD IS no patriot. Mr. Updike emphasizes the teenager’s disdain for the “American reality all around, a sprawling ferment for which he feels the mild pity owed a failed experiment.” This is how he sees the view from the New Jersey Turnpike: “Gulls, at first a few in his vision through the windshield, then dozens coming into focus, and the dozens becoming hundreds, wheel above a waste site. Beyond their greedy gathering of wings, beyond the sullen Hudson, stands the stone-colored silhouette, notched like an immense key, of the great city, Satan’s heart.”

To Ahmad’s contempt add Jack Levy’s bitter gloom, the sardonic deprecations of Shaikh Rashid and the ranting of Ahmad’s employer, a Lebanese-American called Charlie Chehab who hires him to drive around New Jersey delivering furniture, and you get a wide array of satirical opportunities. Mr. Updike seizes them with gusto: They’re his chance to show us the kind of socio-economic snapshot he perfected in the Rabbit tetralogy—but from unfamiliar perspectives.

Here’s Ahmad scoping out the geriatric scene at the Jersey shore: “The guts of the men sag hugely and the monstrous buttocks of the women seesaw painfully as they tread the boardwalk in swollen running shoes. A few steps from death, these American elders defy decorum and dress as toddlers.” The sarcasm loaded on the word “elders” is a neat bit of characterization (an elder is exactly what the fatherless Ahmad needs) and a painful indictment of 21st-century America.

The satire is ample in scope and effectively targeted—it even prompts a reaction (surely Mr. Updike’s canny intention), a surge of affection for the “American reality” and the barbaric yawp of its motley population.

And, of course, as Terrorist’s title bluntly promises, Ahmad—prompted by Shaikh Rashid and Charlie Chehab—volunteers to become a suicide bomber: “I will die,” he says, “if it is the will of God.” He enlists in a rush-hour plot callously calculated to kill many thousands.

Everything about the terrorist plot (and the plot of the novel, with its unlikely coincidences and weak motivations) is a disappointment. The least-convincing parts are the several cameo appearances by the Secretary of Homeland Security, who just happens to be the boss of Jack Levy’s sister-in-law: “The Secretary muses aloud, ‘Those people out there … Why do they want to do these horrible things? Why do they hate us? What’s to hate?’” Not even a Bush appointee could be so lame.

Mr. Updike answers the Secretary’s question by getting us into Ahmad’s head, which is a good thing—it’s what we desperately need. We need to know about Ahmad’s contempt, his pity (and lack thereof), his alienation, his proud zeal—all the sources of his suicidal resolve.

What we don’t need is the mechanics of his terrorist mission and the shadowy conspiracy that supports it; or the fumbling counter-conspiracy aimed at thwarting it; or the unsteady ratcheting of suspense. Cloak-and-dagger is not Mr. Updike’s strength. It’s as if, after battering us with anti-American tirades, he suddenly thought he’d better whip up some thrills. They’re about as effective as the Department of Homeland Security raising the “terror-threat level” from yellow to orange.

Adam Begley is the books editor of The Observer.

(Senator Schumer, who was scheduled to provide opening remarks, and Senator Clinton, who was rumored to appear, both had to be in Washington).

Moderator Brian Lehrer started things off by asking about the president’s recent appointment.

"Dave Paulison is an exceptionally good person," said Mr. Witt. "But the position they have put him in--searching all over the world to find someone to take that position--has weakened that position. If I had been Mr. Paulison, I would have told them to take it, and put it somewhere else."

"He's in a position that will put him in a position of failure," continued Mr. Witt. "Unless they pull FEMA out of the Department of Homeland Security, put it back as an independent agency, then he's asking for failure."

Mr. Brown, who has currently been making the rounds to improve his public persona--with appearances on The Colbert Report and Inside City Hall, shared Mr. Witt's frustration with the agency.

"Dave is a very smart guy," said Mr. Brown. Then an audience member, from within the overflowing crowd packed into the Tishman Auditorium, momentarily cut him off, shouting, "Helluva job, Brownie."

But he continued with his pessimistic view.

"The current structure of FEMA is not going to allow anyone to succeed," said Mr. Brown.

Later, Mr. Brown claimed that he had warned the Department of Homeland Security that FEMA's budget was "tinkering on disaster." Also, he maintains that he foresaw New Orleans as "the perfect scenario of how everything could go wrong."

"I just didn't want it to occur on my watch," he added.

And what advice does he have for New School students in attendance?

"It's wonderful being both the scapegoat and the fall guy," said Mr. Brown jokingly. "It's a wonderful path for you who want to go into public service."

(You can listen to the discussion here.)

- Michael Calderone

Anyway, in her latest announcement of $1.8 million in federal grants --
$82,162 for the Kerhonkson-Accord First Aid Squad, inter alia -- Clinton makes clear the obvious: that she also thinks this is the right way to allocate money from the Department of Homeland Security's budget:

"This is just the kind of help that our fire departments need as they deal with the challenge of keeping our communities safe, and right now, it is more important than ever that we give them the right resources to do the job," Senator Clinton said, according to the press release.

The latest round were announced yesterday and, yes, Mumford is a big winner.

Post-Katrina, homeland security is obviously getting a lot of re-thinking. And grants to first responders sound all the more virtuous.

When you think about it, though, the thin, even layer of security spending spread across America looks even worse now. New Orleans, remember, was seen as being among the handful of places at the very highest risk of a catastrophe, because of its levee system. But Louisiana, like upstate New York, like Wyoming, only got its fair share of security money, and the upgrades of the levees proceeded, as has been painfully detailed, at a lesiurely pace.

So it still seems fair to wonder whether the $176,576 that Hillary has proudly dispatched to Stillwater reflects the best possible use of federal security money.

Well, she's still going strong.

In a letter to congressional leaders she sent out today, she cited 9/11 in her fight to preserve the Homeland Security program that issues grants to local fire companies, which, as we reported in December, kind of undermines her, and New York City's, argument that Homeland Security money should be distributed based on risk. (Not to mention that the local agencies use the money to buy pickup trucks and anti-drug gear.)

Her press release helpfully links to a website that tallies hundreds of recent grants. Here's a random sampling:

-$28,350 to Scoresby Hose Hook & Ladder Company No.1 in Ellenville, for "Wellness and Fitness Programs," inter alia.

-$73,267.00 to the East Randolph Fire Company for equipment.

-$132,864.00 to the Aurelius Fire District in Auburn for equipment and to "modify facilities."

"These resources have enabled fire departments to obtain updated firefighting equipment and improve firefighter training - two activities that are crucial towards ensuring that firefighters carry out their expanded responsibilities in this post-9/11 world," she wrote in the letter to Senate leaders.

Ontario County emergency management chief Jeffrey Harloff told us at the time: "If it's the federal government asking me, it is for the intended purpose of W.M.D. incidents and HazMat incidents. In reality, we're going to use it for everyday stuff in our office."

Now, Hillary has always been the master of the rich new field we called "security pork," and her press release yesterday couldn't have demonstrated the contradiction more clearly:

"SENATOR CLINTON ANNOUNCES OVER $2.6 MILLION IN FEDERAL FIREFIGHTER GRANTS FOR NEW YORK AND EXPRESSES SERIOUS CONCERN ABOUT DEVASTATING CUTS TO FIRE ACT IN BUSH'S BUDGET PROPOSAL"

Where are these grants going?

Albany (of course), Cayuga, Chenango, Clinton, Columbia, Erie, Jefferson, Kings, Montgomery, Nassau, Niagara, Onondaga, Oswego, Otsego, Suffolk and Wayne Counties.

We realize Senators see it as their job to fight for pork, but when it comes to the Department of Homeland Security, perhaps New York's representatives would be able to press the case for the city more convincingly if they weren't so busy handing out checks in Otsego County, where the top terror target -- we're not kidding, this is what they told us -- is the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Hillary couldn't quite bring herself to say that this is actually anti-terror spending. The best she could do in the press release was, "Every dollar that our local communities receive means extra resources not only to help them fight fires but to help them respond to other emergencies and ensure public safety."

But perhaps this money could be found somewhere other than the Department of Homeland Security, which we'd (we know, vainly) hoped was busy guarding actual terror targets. Like our city.

So if this is a program that directs federal security money to places like Chenango County (pop. 51,401), we say: Cut away!

On that awful day-after standing outside my home and watching the World Trade Center fall-I hoped that George W. Bush would reconsider his rejection of America's multilateral traditions. That day, I wrote a column suggesting that if the President and his advisers grasped the dimensions of the threat posed by Islamist terror, they just might abandon their unilateral illusions. If they understood what real security required, they might even seek renewed cooperation with our alienated allies.

A faint facsimile of that recognition began to emerge last week, when Mr. Bush finally asked the United Nations to approve international assistance in Iraq. As our allies are all too well aware, he made that belated decision only under economic, military and political pressures that have become irresistible. The President has staked not only the prestige of the United States but the future safety of the nation on his gamble in Baghdad. On the anniversary of the terrorist atrocity, it seems appropriate to ask whether his policies since Sept. 11 have improved our safety, or left us in greater danger.

Critics of White House policy should acknowledge that Mr. Bush's government has achieved significant victories against Al Qaeda, our primary enemy. Osama bin Laden's territorial base of operations was destroyed and many of his lieutenants have been killed or captured. Despite frequent threats and constant intelligence "chatter" from the Islamist network, we have yet to suffer another attack on American soil.

Yet because the President hesitated to commit American troops in sufficient numbers to extirpate both Al Qaeda and the Taliban, they are reportedly regrouping in Afghanistan, a country that we bombed and abandoned. It is difficult to understand why we have sent 130,000 troops to occupy Iraq, rather than to destroy the marauders who committed a bloody act of war against our civilians. It is also hard to understand why that mission remains unfinished, considering the extreme peril of renewed Islamist power on the border of unstable, nuclearized Pakistan.

Instead of completing the pacification of Afghanistan-a project that enjoyed the full support of our allies and most of the world-Mr. Bush embarked on the lonely American adventure in Iraq. Every day the recklessness of that endeavor is confirmed, while the promised benefits continue to recede. Our troops have found none of the terrifying weapons that they invaded Iraq to capture. Our diplomatic initiative in the Middle East has reached an abrupt dead end. Our capacity to use Iraqi oil revenues to rebuild that country has proved to be imaginary.

With the President's request for $87 billion to finance the war on terrorism-following an initial expenditure of roughly $70 billion in Iraq so far-we are beginning to learn the true costs that Mr. Bush had managed to conceal from us (and perhaps from himself). That financial burden cannot be shifted or evaded without incurring further, unacceptable damage to American credibility. We cannot treat Iraq as we have treated the ruin of Afghanistan.

But at a time when the government is about to record the largest deficit in American history, the President's $87 billion voucher will mean neglect of domestic priorities-notably in the administration's poorly funded, badly managed effort to improve "homeland security."

According to The Washington Post , which published a revealing dissection of the disarray in the Department of Homeland Security on Sept. 7, its funding is so sparse that there aren't enough secure telephone lines in its headquarters. Administration officials interviewed by The Post admitted that it has so far failed to "organize the government's 10 or so disparate lists of potential terrorism suspects, secure airline cargo against terrorist plots, and advise local police and firefighters on training and equipment." Amazingly, the proper staffing of the department's upper management has been almost impossible because administrators in other agencies regard its mission as low-priority and its disorganized bureaucracy as a backwater.

Although Homeland Security directs the front line of defense against terror, "money is scarce and a constant preoccupation for department managers …. The result is cascading budget crises that have led officials to make emergency cuts in crucial programs such as port security and air marshals."

The sum that the President requested from Congress for Iraq happens to be roughly double the budget of the Department of Homeland Security, which is currently set at $36 billion. It also happens to equal the combined deficits of the 50 states this year, more or less, as they struggle with the aftermath of Sept. 11.

Here's another statistic: The Council on Foreign Relations issued a report this summer warning that homeland-security spending will fall short of minimum requirements by more than $98 billion over the next several years.

This administration's priorities seem skewed-and on this anniversary, there seems little likelihood that this President will correct them.