President Bush has named veteran prosecutor Ken Wainstein, currently helming Justice’s anti-terror efforts, to be his new White House-based homeland security adviser, The Associated Press’ Devlin Barrett reports. This announcement coincides with Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball’s Newsweekreport detailing the many likelies who have declined to replace Frances Fragos Townsend, who announced her depature last November to leave plenty of time — if apparently not enough — to find her replacement.

Feds: The next president’s DHS transition manager “should be cognizant of a number of jewels hidden in throughout the department that deserve to be more prominent than they have been,” Security DeBrief’s Randy Beardsworth advises. The Bush administration plans to tap a Silicon Valley entrepreneur to head a new interagency cyberdefense group, The Washington Post’s Brian Krebs recounts. USCIS officials expect to be overwhelmed with more high-tech worker visa applications than they can grant when the application period opens April 1, AP’s Erica Werner reports.

Poly-ticks: “We must continue and win in the War on Terror so we keep America and Americans safe from the threat of radical Islam,” The Storm Lake Pilot Tribune quotes from the re-election bid announcement of Rep. Steve King — he who famously warned that jihadis would celebrate a Barack Obama victory because of his middle name. “The McCain campaign owes King an apology and [he] is right to reiterate his position and reject the McCain’s disavowal of him,” Michael Gaynor insists on The Conservative Voice. “Israel received tacit approval for taking military action against terrorists and rocket fire coming from the Gaza Strip from visiting Republican presidential candidate John McCain,” Cybercast News Service reports — while the Chicago Theological Seminary’s president limns in the Post “the theology behind John McCain’s transcendent and dangerous view of war in Iraq.” Check, also, OhMyGov! for a detailed breakdown of the troika’s stances on border security and immigration.

Obama-rama: “Whether it’s McCain or Obama or Clinton, the war effort cannot end immediately . . . but the objective must be to end the war resolutely and expediently with bipartisan support,” The Orangeburg (S.C.) Times and Democrat opines. “People who deny that U.S. foreign policy mishaps provoke long-term consequences are liars. People like them — people like Barack Obama — are laying the foundation for the next 9/11,” cartoonist-zealot Ted Rall reacts on uExpress.com. “Is Barack Obama a Muslim. Almost certainly not. Was he ever a Muslim? Almost certainly yes,” Israel e Newschidingly cites an editorial in The Jewish Daily Forward. “I’ve been involved in politics for quite a long time, and I’ve never quite seen anything like this before,” ex-Rep. Mel Levine, Obama’s Mideast adviser, tells Haaretz of the covert e-mail tsunami alleging his candidate’s secret Islamic agenda.

Ivory (Watch) Towers: DHS’s Mike Chertoff credits Howard Kunreuther of the Wharton School with coining his recently much-used updating of NIMBY — NIMTOF, or “Not In My Term Of Office,” meaning not wanting to spend money unless the fruits are harvested within that election cycle,U.S. News notes. An international affairs professor known as a terror expert has resigned after a U. Georgia investigation of sexual harassment complaints, The Red and Black relates. The Army has given $10 million to the University of Michigan in hopes of receiving back a six-inch bat-like UAV to collect “sights, sounds, and smells in urban combat zones,” Homeland Security Daily Wire reports. Indiana’s homeland shop has a new executive director after his predecessor returned to Purdue University, WTHR 13 relates. The director of USCIS discussed the relationship between modern U.S. immigration policy and national security yesterday at Florida State University, The Tallahassee Democrat records.

Buggy: A closer look at the 2006 E. colioutbreaks “may help us to put aside our fears for the moment. Engineering plagues is harder than it looks,” a Slate piece suggests. DHS forensic specialists want better tools to identify bio-agents to compare to others they might collect at a suspected terrorist’s home laboratory, Government Security News notes. A pandemic simulation exercise staged in Atlanta last week offers “a close-up look at the CDC’s expectations about the kinds of challenges it will face in the early stages of a real pandemic and how it might be likely to respond,” CIDRAP News post-mortems. Volunteers took “patient” information and directed participants through a mock bioterror response clinic Tuesday at Lewis and Clark Community College, The River Bend (Ill.) Telegraph tells.

Coming and going: A terrorist who could sneak tiny bomb parts on to a plane and assemble them in midair is the key worry of U.S. screeners, The Canadian Presscites a visiting TSA official. Officials from Slovakia, Hungary and Lithuania announced agreements to enhance security measures for future visa-free travel to the United States, The Middle East Times tells. Israel’s renowned airline security faces a legal challenge from a civil rights group charging that its practice of ethnic profiling is racist because it singles out Arabs for tougher treatment, AP reports. With 60 percent of passengers at China’s Kunming airport being searched before boarding — following last week’s mysterious security scare — travelers are missing their flights right and left, GoKunmingposts. The Coast Guard has placed Iran on the port security advisory list for not maintaining effective anti-terrorism measures, MarineLog mentions — while ABC 7 has local cops and CBP agents setting up new checkpoints to screen trucks at the Port of Oakland.

Border wars: “Along the border, preliminary plans for fencing seem to target landowners of modest means and cities and public institutions which rely on the federal government to pay their bills,” an updated Texas Observer piece tells — while AP has South Texas property owners testifying that DHSers seeking access to land to survey for the border fence did not try to negotiate before suing. The El Paso City Council, meanwhile, has unanimously blocked the feds from using a city-owned roadway to access a section of border fence that DHS wants to replace, The El Paso Times tells.

Courts and rights: A jury of nine men and nine women has been selected in Toledo to hear a predicted three months of testimony concerning three men facing terror conspiracy charges, the Blade relates. Federal prosecutors say they shouldn’t have to give defense attorneys more information about a terror charge against an ex-South Florida student, The Tampa Tribune recounts. The trial of 26 Americans charged with kidnapping a terror suspect during an alleged CIA operation resumed yesterday in Italy, AP reports. A Vermont jury this week convicted a Burlington airport TSA screener on multiple child sex charges, WCAX-TV 3 tells. A young Canadian detainee says in legal documents that U.S. interrogators repeatedly threatened to rape him and Canadian government visitors told him they were powerless to intervene, Reuters reports.

Over there: An accused Tamil Tigers fundraiser arrested in British Columbia last week was ordered released on $25,000 bail Tuesday, The Victoria Times Colonist recounts — while The Canadian Press spotlights a Vancouver-area man who has become that nation’s first to be sentenced for terror hoaxing. Climate change and pandemic disease are just as threatening as terrorism, Britain’s P.M. said yesterday, The Guardian relays — while The Daily Telegraph quotes his strategy report to the effect that counterterrorists are routinely “contending with around 30 plots, 200 groups or networks and 2,000 individuals.” For what it’s worth, Iraq wrapped up a two-day unity conference by condemning terrorism, Agence France-Presse reports — while McClatchy Newspapers finds a visiting Veep Dick Cheney linking the 2002 invasion to the 9/11 attacks yet again.

Over here: The issue of “Muslim barbarism” — honor killings, genital mutilation, etc. — “has risen in prominence in Europe ’s political agenda. The question appears to be: Do Muslims commit barbaric acts because they are bad Muslims or because they are good Muslims?” an Asia Times essay assesses. “An effort by radical Islamists to smear terrorism expert Steven Emerson backfired when the allegations proved to be fabricated,” The Counterterrorism Blog recounts. When Al-Arabiya reported — 16 months late — that the U.S. weekly Human Events will distribute free copies of a book associating Islam with terrorism, Hamas went up in arms, Israel’s Arutz Sheva relates.

Holy Wars: “How is it that what so many Westerners see as the most unappealing and premodern aspect of Islam is, to many Muslims, the vibrant, attractive core of a global movement of Islamic revival?” a Times Sunday Magazine essay on Shariah law asks. The U.S.’s longstanding policies toward the Muslim world are at the root of al Qaeda’s draw among Islam’s radical young, not its theological tenets, an article in The American Muslim maintains. The appeal of “radical Islam is that it is comprehensive and coherent, not that it is true, edifying, uplifting [or] consistent with tradition and historical interpretation,” a Diplomatic Traffic contributor comments. A new study of Iranian textbooks finds that the Islamic Republic is teaching its children to embrace Islamic supremacism, The New York Sun says.

Two-point conversion: “Buffeted by criticism of his controversial Christian pastor while continuing to quell rumors that he is a Muslim, Barack Obama took a bold step today to settle questions about his religious faith once and for all,” The Borowitz Report reports. “I am converting to Judaism, effective immediately,” Obama told reporters at a press conference in Scarsdale, N.Y., adding that he would change his middle name from ‘Hussein’ to ‘Murray.’ As a sign of commitment to his new faith, the Illinois senator said that he anticipated being Bar Mitzvahed sometime between now and the crucial Pennsylvania primary and that he would no longer campaign on Saturdays. While some political observers praised a shrewd tactic to put the issue of his religious identity to rest, the move raised the ire of one of his harshest critics, former Rep. Geradline Ferraro, heard muttering, ‘Barack Murray Obama wouldn’t be in the position he’s in if he wasn’t Jewish.’”