“With Senate Dem leaders engrossed in Iraq war quarrels, the prospects of signature bills such as . . . homeland-security improvements becoming law any time soon are doubtful,” The Washington Times’ Christina Bellantoni predicts. DHS officials on Tuesday defended their fiscal 2008 budget and cybersecurity and critical infrastructure plans, even as the GAO said the department faces major emergency preparedness challenges, CongressDaily’s Andy Leonatti rounds up.

Spooks: Terror detainees once held in the CIA’s secret prisons were kept and questioned under highly abusive conditions, The Associated Press’ Katherine Shrader has the Red Cross saying in a confidential report. A Northern Ireland airport may be the first in Europe to ban the CIA’s controversial “extraordinary rendition” flights, The Belfast Telegraph’s Brian Hutton tells. As the CIA’s tough post-9/11 tactics “come under growing scrutiny, even allies closest to the US are having to publicly distance themselves from its operations — even if they know far more about them than they are letting on,” BBC News’ Gordon Corera surveys.

State and local: With DHS having ceased funding American Samoa’s homeland offices in mid-January following an alarming audit, an official there urges laying off the residual 22 employees, Radio New Zealandreports. A $25,000 DHS grant will likely be used for a new panic alarm system at the Grady County (Okla.) Courthouse, The Express-Star says. Colorado’s House passed a unanimous resolution Monday insisting on federal reimbursement for the imprisonment of illegal aliens, The Rocky Mountain News notes. “When DHS funds finally disappear, Island County [Wash.] will be adequately positioned to carry on without the federal aid,” The Whidbey News-Times assures.

Ivory (Watch) Towers: Some 350 universities and colleges are involved in research or are offering courses or degrees in some aspect of homeland security, The Newark Star-Ledger surveys. About 55 students at Michigan’s Davenport University are enrolled in either the two- or four-year biometric security degree programs, one of the first such in the nation, AP reports. West Virginia University is the nation’s only college with a similar program, offering an engineering degree in biometric devices, The Homeland Security Daily Wire adds. Johns Hopkins’ newly launched Center for the Study of Preparedness and Catastrophic Event Response will this month host with a group of JHU undergraduates a homeland security-themed conference for area high schoolers, The Gazette says. Pat Roberts Hall, home of the new $50 million Biosecurity Research Institute — the world’s only full-size, agricultural and food safety biosecurity lab — opens this month at Kansas State University, Topeka’s WIBW Channel 13 relates.

School daze: U.K. students could be banned from wearing full-face Muslim veils for security or educational reasons under new guidelines cited by Reuters. A Canadian student entering the United States claims he was detained for 12 hours and “interrogated like a suspected terrorist” by DHS agents — who, by seizing his laptop, “might have cost him his school semester and future career,” The Thunder Bay (Ont.) Chronicle Journal recounts. Ottawa must press U.S. border authorities to stop racial and religious profiling of Canadian Muslims and Arabs, the Canadian Press finds an Islamic rights group asserting in response to the incident.

First aid: The largest U.S. cities are catastrophically unprepared for a nuclear attack and the widespread medical emergencies that would result, The Atlanta Journal-Constitutionquotes from a new study. “A growing number of California paramedics, under stress with easy access to medication, are abusing drugs and alcohol, statistics show, putting patients at risk,” The Sacramento Bee spotlights.

Air wars: An 8-inch knife found on board a Horizon flight landing at Portland’s airport Monday has exposed airline security concerns, KGW TV tells. A Canadian Senate panel slams airport security there, warning that Ottawa has made but “negligible” progress on overdue counterterror reforms, The Toronto Star tells. An Indian Airlines flight made an emergency landing in Calcutta yesterday after a passenger claimed he had a bomb during a scuffle with a seat mate, AP reports. A Seattle airline courtesy consultant who flew out of New York early on Sept. 11 has penned “Reclaiming the Sky,” a tribute to the aviation workers who coped with 9/11, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer profiles.

Coming and going: TSA security teams will board NYC commuter trains in a major anti-terror plan to safeguard more than 500,000 daily Metro-North and LIRR riders, The New York Daily News records. The teams will include federal air marshals, transportation security officers, transportation vulnerability inspectors and certified canine teams, an official informs Newsday. Two Border Patrollers investigating bundles of marijuana exchanged shots with unseen assailants firing from the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, AP reports. In Arizona border towns, hotels are booked up and bars and eateries are hopping thanks to the influx of border-watching National Guards, The Christian Science Monitor mentions.

Papers, please: A senior DHS official finds the privacy concerns prompted by the proposed Real ID regime puzzling, CNET News passes along. New Hampshire’s House “took a baby step Tuesday toward rejecting what [members] say amounts to the creation of a national ID card,” Foster’s Daily Democrat relatedly reports. “Creating these super licenses could cost more than $11 billion . . . a price the federal government hasn’t yet offered to pay, making this an expensive investment with a limited payoff,” The Boston Globe bashes. A Nevada solon suggests taking what appears to be an easy out of the Real ID quandary: dumping the requirement on U.S. passport offices, The Nevada Appeal reports. But “a rush of spring-break travelers coupled with a surge in passport applications make for nightmarish conditions,” The Chicago Tribune reports from the passport office front lines. An estimated 10,000 British passports were issued to fraudulent applicants last year, The Daily Telegraph quotes from new government figures.

Courts and rights: A federal grand jury has indicted a former sailor on charges of spying and providing material support to terrorists in a case going back six years, Reutersreports. A Chicago man pleaded not guilty in Toledo Wednesday to federal charges that he plotted to recruit and train terrorists to attack U.S. and allied troops, AP reports. A Pennsylvania man accused of trying to help al Qaeda won’t go to trial as scheduled next week, a judge having granted his defense more time for preparation, The Scranton Times-Tribune tells. A New York judge has okayed a questionnaire to help determine whether prospective terror trial jurors are biased against Muslims, AP reports. A moderate Muslim group will defend pro bono any passengers named in a lawsuit against US Airways as “John Does” for the supposedly reporting suspicious behavior that got six imams booted from a November flight, The Washington Times tells.

Over there: The United States and the United Kingdom yesterday criticized Italy’s hostage deal with the Taliban, saying the release of five guerrillas in exchange for an Italian reporter put NATO troops in danger and encouraged kidnappings, Reuters reports. In the Pakistani border zone, fierce fighting between pro-Taliban tribesmen and al Qaeda-linked Uzbek militants has left at least 58 dead, The Christian Science Monitorspotlights. Three Islamic militants were found guilty yesterday of decapitating three Christian schoolgirls in Indonesia and dumping their bloodied heads in nearby villages, AP reports.

Over here: A Christian Action Network big faces a misdemeanor charge of littering stemming from the distribution of fliers critical of a local Muslim community, The Richmond Times-Dispatchrecords. In the wake of community complaints, Target is reassigning Muslim cashiers who refuse to ring up pork products, The Minneapolis Star Tribune tells. “From his plush, high-tech headquarters in London,” the leader of Al-Muhajiroun tells WorldNetDaily’sJoseph Farah that “Muslims in the West have very serious responsibilities in preparing the people to embrace Islam or to accept the Islamic way of life.” A UK junior school has given the “The Three Little Pigs” a reprieve after banning them from an assembly for fear of offending Muslims, The Daily Telegraph tells. The first thought was to rename it, “The Three Little Puppies,” which drew Muslim complaints that such over-anxious political correctness made them into “misfits,” The Daily Mail mentions. American Muslims “condemn terrorism and condemn the 9/11 attacks, without reservation. But there is a critical need to understand the origins of the terrorist mentality,” M. Kay Siblani insists in The American Arab’s coverage of DHS’s March 14 testimony on homegrown jihadism.

Ecumenicism: The chief of the Islamic Society of North America warned last week that U.S. Jews who ally with right-wing Christians to oppose Muslim organizations are pursuing a high-risk strategy that could backfire, The Boston Globe’s Charles A. Radin reports. “Here was a Jewish scholar criticizing the Pope for apologizing to Muslims for a holy war against Muslims, which was also a massacre of the Jews,” Jacob Weisberg marvels in Slate over Bernard Lewis’ address at the AEI’s recent annual black-tie schmooze-fest. “The Muslims bring fervor and conviction to the struggle; we don't. The Muslims are self-assured in the rightness of their cause; we answer with self-denigration and self-debasement. Muslims prize loyalty and discipline; we prize politically correct multiculturalism,” Suzanne Fields contrasts in the Washington Times, channeling Lewis.

Getting Smart: “In response to what he called a ‘significant increase in the amount of misinformation about our enemies,’ President Bush today announced a new Cabinet-level agency devoted solely to faulty intelligence,” The Borowitz Report reports. “By creating the Department of Faulty Intelligence, Bush said, ‘the United States will be able to respond swiftly and preemptively to false threats before they don’t develop.’ Bush said that he hoped that the DFI would not only increase the United States’ capacity to collect false leads and red herrings, but that it would also help coordinate the sharing of useless information among the US’s various spy agencies,” Andy Borowitz writes. “Bush also introduced his nominee to head up the new department, James Frey, the author of ‘A Million Little Pieces.’ Frey spoke mainly in general terms about the goals of the new agency, but indicated that it would focus on ‘the gathering threat’ posed by Belgium’s nuclear program.”