Defying adamant industry opposition, Senate Dems yesterday grafted language onto the emergency supplemental bill empowering states to enforce chemical security laws stricter than federal regs, CongressDaily’s Chris Strohm reports. Lawmakers “have been more worried about currying favor with the chemical industry, a major campaign donor, than with safeguarding their constituents,” a New York Times editorial chides — while The Detroit News skeptically susses out new DHS regs debuting next month. “There are about 14,000 high-risk chemical facilities across the nation, more than 100 of them within reach of populations of 1 million or more,” The Associated Press’ Beverley Lumpkin reminds.

Federal soup: In his first weeks as defense secretary, Robert M. Gates repeatedly — and unsuccessfully — argued that the Guantanamo detention facility be shuttered and any trials held in the United States, the Times’ Thom Shanker and David E. Sanger say. (See “Inside Gitmo,” a Magnum photo essay in Slate.) Singled out in State’s 2008 budget as its "principal counter-terrorism initiative," the Regional Strategic Initiative “has been starved for funds and other support,” the Los Angeles Times’ Josh Meyer spotlights. Even three years ago, the recipient of an FBI “national security letter” writes anonymously in The Washington Post, “I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled.”

Homies: Congress percolates with proposals to shift some 1,800 unarmed but pest-wise inspectors out of DHS and back into the Ag Department, Scripps News’ Michael Doyle mentions. The GAO wants DHS to better assess the privacy risks posed by an ambitious data-mining effort, Newsday’s Carol Eisenberg recounts. A Texas lawmaker challenging the prosecution of two drug-smuggler shooting Border Patrol agents describes as "appalling" the DHS IG’s efforts to defend alleged misstatements his office made to lawmakers, The Washington Times’ Jerry Seper reports.

State and local: Nine state attorneys general have asked the NRC to consider again allowing terror attack potential on a reactor to weigh in on license-renewal decisions, The Albany Times Union relays. Washington lawmakers have okayed a $40 enhanced driver’s license to facilitate crossing into British Columbia, possibly in lieu of a passport, The Tacoma News Tribune relays. Gotham’s mayor wants Congress to reopen a fund to compensate more 9/11 victims, lest the city lose billions to lawsuits, AP reports. With $2 billion state pension dollars invested in companies trading with terror-supporting nations, Maryland lawmakers “are reaching for global results with local legislation,” Annapolis Capitalrecounts — and see The Financial Times on the emergent terror-free investmentindustry.

Bid-ness: “If readers do not believe us when we tell them the homeland security market is booming . . . perhaps they will take the word of those willing to put their money where their mouths are,” The Homeland Security Daily Wire blogs. Largely off the radar, “the shadowy mercenary company Blackwater USA . . . has secured a position of remarkable power and protection within the US war apparatus,” The Nation nags. Start-up DHS chief Tom Ridge will not stand for re-election to the Home Depot board, FOX News relays. Thanks in part to ePassports, Frost & Sullivan predicts market-earned revenues from RFIDs to reach $1.6 billion in 2011, HSDW also reports.

Chemical reactions: As has been his wont, Interpol’s chief called again this week on law enforcers worldwide to prepare for bioterror attack, The Gulf News notes. Israel on Wednesday concluded a two-day chemical attack drill, enlisting some 5,000 police officers, 1,000 soldiers and 1,500 medics and firefighters, Agence France-Presse reports. Items found in a dumpster by a Redford (Mich.) businessman — gas masks, notes about terror activity — have drawn the interest of the FBI, The Observer & Eccentric informs.

Coming and going: Orlando airport officials have voted to spend $7 million for additional security in hopes of preventing a repeat of a breach earlier this month, the Sentinel says. The Daily Iowan riffs on Reef’s party-hearty Dram sandal, “featuring a polyurethane encapsulated canteen in the heel” — a sure hit with airport screeners. A new report warns that maritime cargo containers are an “obvious alternative” for terrorists, while judging Canadian ports ill-equipped to monitor them, The Canadian Press reports. The Luna County (N.M.) sheriff’s office remains tightly focused on border security issues, The Deming Headlight recounts. Most illegal immigrants crossing into Texas had to be arrested at least six times before facing prosecution, APlearns from a Justice memo.

Papers, please: Some evangelical groups say the Real ID Act represents the “mark of the beast” — and some Missouri legislators are listening, The St. Louis Post-Dispatchreports. North Carolina’s Division of Motor Vehicles issued about 27,000 driver’s licenses to people with invalid Social Security numbers, Raleigh’s WRALhas a state audit reporting. “Illegal immigrants have turned to bona fide documents, stolen or bought by traffickers from actual Americans,” the Times spotlights. Because his name matches a watch list entry, DHS is refusing a visa to renowned Mexican guitarist, Rodrigo Y Gabriela, forcing cancellation of half a dozen U.S. shows, The Daily Kos relays.

Boobs and tubes: Fox’s “24,” is always “pitting our legitimate security needs against the most cherished tenets of our civilization. The stress one hour of this imposes on Jack Bauer alone makes good drama, but its extension to all America, for an indefinite time, is a farce,” The American Conservative’s Michael Brendan Dougherty concludes. The war on terror is surfacing “not just on ‘24’ or ripped-from-the-headline crime series like ‘Law & Order,’ but even on reality shows and sitcoms,” the Times’ Allessandra Stanley surveys. “There is YouTube, and there will be homeland security tube,” The Homeland Security Daily Wire suggests, reporting an Internet TV firm’s selection as the platform for “24/7 live and on demand homeland security-related programs.” If the BBC’s pending Arabic TV “resembles its radio programs, then they will be just as anti-Western as anything that comes out of the Gulf, if not more so,” Frank H. Stewart frowns in a Timesop-ed. Apparently referencing Warner Bros.’s Spartans v. Persians blockbuster, “300,” Iran’s president accused unnamed nations of waging psychological warfare by portraying it as “savage” in an unnamed film, Reuters’ Edmund Blair reports.

Kulture Kanyon: DHS is considering “setting up an outpost” in Second Life, the virtual Sims-like world, Government Computer News’ Trudy Walsh writes — and it’s about time, given Second Life’s recent wave of terrorism. “Think medical records are private? Think again,” an aggrieved party charges in a baffling eWorldWire release accusing the Screen Actors Guild of disclosing protected medical info to DHS and “organized crime associates.” Dublin saw the Irish premier this week of Robin Soans’ “Talking to Terrorists,” a “critically-acclaimed work of documentary theater drawn from conversations with notorious bombers and their victims,” The Evening Echoexplains. In Manhattan on 9/11, “there were all these people crying and you knew they had lost someone,” writer-director Mike Binder tells New City Chicago’s Ray Pride of the inspiration for his Adam Sandler sob-story, “Reign Over Me” (Sony.) From his Wunderland War site, drummer-artist-designer Vinnie Fiorello is peddling — at $100 a pop - a very limit run of five t-shirt sets based on DHS’s color-coded advisory system. “Today, you’d be in the yellowish ‘sunlight post-dirty bomb" shirt,’ unless you were traveling by plane, in which case, you’d want to be the vigilant orange shirt,” 27B Stroke 6’s Ryan Singel blogs. “I hear the green shirts won’t wear out any time soon.”

Courts and rights: An appeals court ruled Wednesday against an ex-New Jersey poet laureate who was dismissed after suggesting in a poem that Israel had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, AP reports. Former Florida professor and admitted Islamic Jihad supporter Sami al-Arian is “very, very weak” after two months on a hunger strike that his family thinks threatens his life, AP quotes his wife. The CIA wants an agent to testify in disguise at Jose Padilla’s terror trial to protect his ID and secret agency locations in Afghanistan, AP also reports. The U.S. government will not intervene in the fate of a young American who came to Somalia to help build an Islamic state but has been held incommunicado in Ethiopia for more than five weeks, McClatchy Newspapers notes.

Over there: Three men were arrested in the United Kingdom yesterday connection with the July 7 London bombings, two just before boarding a Pakistan-bound flight, The Guardian says. An Indian-born Canadian Sikh who was acquitted in the 1985 Air India bombing that killed 329, has filed a lawsuit against Canada and British Columbia, The Timestells. Thirteen Melbourne terror suspects will range more freely after revision of a security classification that has kept them locked in their cells for 18 hours a day, The Australiansays. An Algerian court has sentenced to death a man considered to be the country’s top terrorist, AP says. Indonesian police yesterday announced uncovering explosives, guns and lots of ammo following a deadly raid on suspected al Qaeda-linked militants, AFP reports. Member nations of the Shanghai Cooperative Organization will stage a joint anti-terror exercise in Russia this year, Xinhua says.

Nerdi jihadi: “DHS has issued an orange or ‘high risk’ advisory after intercepting an al Qaeda e-mail claiming it has made significant inroads among audio-visual crews at U.S. high schools,” The Spoof spoofs. “’We have turned the A-V Club president in Bloomfield Hills,’ the message reads: ‘All it took was a black Goth-style t-shirt with ‘Allah is Awesome!’ silk-screened on the front!’ High-school audio visual crews are responsible for setting up microphones, public address systems and overhead projectors for school assemblies and dances . . . They are seen as a valuable resource in al Qaeda’s quest to establish a caliphate based in the US. ‘A-V crew members have the technical skills that Islamofascists need to take over student councils, and they often have blueprints showing where electrical outlets are located throughout school buildings,’ DHS chief Michael Chertoff says. ‘These kids tend to read a lot of comic books and send away for valuable prizes, which is frequently how international terrorist organizations recruit new members.’”