“Because of his passable grasp of current events, Osama bin Laden may well understand what many Americans do not: that he is more likely to be killed or captured during the next year or so than at any time since late 2001,” Steve Coll comments in the Los Angeles Times. In recent Hill testimony, however, terror experts agreed “that bin Laden will be hard to find, and is likely to remain at large for years,” The Voice of America’s Cindy Saine relates.

Feds: Bipartisan groups in Congress are pressing for new controls on the FBI’s ability to demand troves of sensitive personal information from telephone providers and credit card companies, The Washington Post’s Carrie Johnson recounts. The war on terror is being hindered by restrictive British law banning plea bargaining — which has created a “dark hole of intelligence,” FBI chief Robert Mueller tells The Daily Mail’s David Rose. Some DHS dictats “smack less of Homeland Security than of flexing new muscle and seeing what we can get away with until someone howls,” The Sandusky (Ohio) Register reacts, responding to pending Great Lakes fishing regs. When Pope Benedict XVI arrives today for a six-day U.S. visit, his every public move will be choreographed according to an elaborate security plan, USA Today’s Kevin Johnson reports.

Poly-ticks: Inseparable “from the idea of the war hero for president is a discussion [about] what their rolNational Guard chiefe in the war says about their moral merits as national leaders. This turns out to be surprisingly problematic,” Charles Derber and Yale Magrass opine in USA Today. For the two contesting Dems, “their main issue regarding the Middle East seems to be who can come up with the latest plan on how to ‘surrender’ in Iraq,” James Lyons lashes in The Washington Times. For Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, “vital to getting the edge in military service-oriented but war-weary Pennsylvania is figuring out how to pull U.S. forces out of Iraq without dragging the flag in the process,” The Associated Press’ Kimberly Hefling surveys. “As we sit in the shadows of the next Administration, the fury of mother-nature, the fanatical actions of people and the vulnerabilities of technology should remind us that another domestic crisis looms,” George Foresman essays on FEMA for Security DeBrief.

State and local: A commercial for Kentucky’s homeland shop “that flashes images of a tornado, a flood and a fiery explosion is receiving some criticism,” Campus News notes. A strong push in Kansas to deal with illegal immigration “has been blunted, diverted and slowed so much that it could end in little more than a muddled mess,” AP surveys. Legislative efforts to repeal a contentious immigration law in Oklahoma never got much support, so opponents pin their hopes on the courts, The Journal Record relays. In an unusual kerfuffle, a panel of retired generals commissioned — and then ignored — by Louisiana’s governor strongly advised against reappointing the state’s long-serving , The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports.

Licensed to ill: New York’s DMV has been bestowed the annual Muzzle Award by a free speech group for trying to yank a Long Island man’s “GETOSAMA” license plate, Newsday notes. “Real ID would surreptitiously require all 50 states to change their driver’s licenses to act as de facto national ID cards. It’s outrageous,” South Carolina’s governor protests in a Washington Times op-ed — while The Kansas City Starhas the Missouri House voting to prohibit compliance with Real ID. The process yielding an enhanced driver’s license that allows Washington Staters to cross the northern border without passports was distinguished by “close cooperation between state, federal and Canadian agencies,” Government Technology surveys.

Bid-ness: “What started as a spinoff from a private investigating practice has grown into a global firm that does about 10,000 background checks a day for employers,” a Redding (Calif.) Record Searchlight profile leads. The border-watching Minuteman Civil Defense Corps’ financial accounting is once more in question, The Washington Times tells. IBM yesterday released a report outlining new risks to people, cargo, global financial and information flows, and modes of transport, CNN Money relays. “Looks like when Bill Gates says ‘Jump,’ the government asks ‘How high?’” Slashdot slams in re: DHS’s recent extension of the time foreign graduates of U.S. colleges can stay here to work. “How can the business world participate in the government’s cyber initiative, CEOs ask, if the government remains intensely secretive?” Forbes essays.

Bugs ‘n bombs: Investigators working a recent rash of Florida bomb threats are dangling a state reward, The Walton Sun says. The DHS facility that researches the dread foot-and-mouth disease has experienced several accidents with the feared virus, AP has federal officials acknowledging last week. Two Palestinians have been arrested for plotting to poison diners at the Israeli restaurant where they worked, Haaretz reports. A drug made out of Salmonella protects animals from radiation and could safeguard rescuers responding to a dirty bomb, New Scientist notes. If you’re a builder, pencil in now a June 4 London conference on “protecting against terrorist bomb attack,” Construction & Maintenance suggests.

Coming and going: TSA uniforms were left out in the open at an O’Hare Airport checkpoint last month, as were sensitive security information and a cashbox, The Chicago Sun-Times gasps. “It makes sense to protect the United States border from the rush of illegal immigrants. It doesn’t make sense to close off 550 acres of a wildlife corridor,” The Orlando Sentinel objects. “Let’s think up ways we can build the border fence without the $50 billion coming from taxpayers: I say sell advertising space on the Mexico side and allow citizens to own individual fence sections on our side,” an El Paso Timescolumnist cracks.

Talking terror: “The view that 9/11 ‘changed everything’ did not hold up under the weight of our politics. Divisions re-emerged between Democrats and Republicans, in office and on the streets,” The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger opines. “American outreach efforts with the Muslim world have been nothing short of a disaster because we continue seeking partners among those who foster anti-American sentiment and who facilitate, rather than rebuke, radical Islamist ideology,” IPT News’ Steven Emerson argues. A new policy promising retaliation against “those states, organizations, or individuals who might enable or facilitate terrorists in obtaining or using weapons of mass destruction” is a major step forward for U.S. counterterror policy, Elbridge Colby applauds for The Weekly Standard. “The rise of Islamist suicide terrorism and Big Lie propaganda is equivalent to Hitler’s rise,” Phyllis Chesler contends in Intellectual Conservative. “A strategy adopted for near-term advantage by a frustrated administration will only increase the likelihood of long-term debacle,” Steven Simon concludes in a Foreign Affairs assessment of the Iraq war “surge.” The National Homeland Security Consortium outlines a domestic security roadmap in a new white paper, Government Technology spotlights.

Book Nook:Philip Bobbitt’s “Terror and Consent” (Knopf) “is quite simply the most profound book to have been written on the subject of American foreign policy since the attacks of 9/11,” Niall Ferguson reviews for the Times. “If anything, the Bush administration’s ideological approach before 9/11 appears similar to its response to terrorism after it,” Jacob Heilbrunn concludes in a Times review of Philip Shenon’s “The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation” (Twelve). The terror threat allows “the United States to spearhead interventions across the globe, with ‘victim states’ agreeing to intervention because they can’t fight al Qaeda on their own,” Khaled Ahmed writes in a Pakistan Daily Times consideration of John Quigly’s “The Ruses for War” (Pentagon Press, New Delhi). “Why is it that very few dare question it when we kill a terrorist, but we are pilloried by every liberal pol and media outlet when we imprison one?” Jack Langer queries in a Human Events appreciation of Andrew McCarthy’s “Willful Blindness” (Encounter). Michael Scheuer’s “scalding attacks” on U.S. pursuit of “defunct Cold War policies in its futile attempts to combat its Islamic transcontinental enemy,” make “Marching Towards Hell: America and Islam after Iraq” (Simon & Schuster) “a stimulating, if frightening, read,” Gordon Parsons judges in Political Affairs Magazine.

Courts and rights: In the first day of trial for the Jewish Federation shooter, prosecutors stressed that Naveed Haq, despite a history of mental illness, carefully planned the attack to make a political point, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer informs. Through the trials of six alleged 9/11 conspirators “we may come closer to learning much of what we still don’t know about the administration’s rendition program,” a New York Review of Books essay suggests — while AP sees defendants “turning their backs on U.S. war crimes trials, creating complications in the long-stalled effort to prosecute suspected terrorists.”

Over there: If Washington ever attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities, it will fall to Brigadier Gen. Qassem Suleimani to coordinate terrorist retaliation against U.S. targets abroad,CQ Homeland Security’s SpyTalker profiles. Some high-level securicrats dismiss natural disasters, terrorism, cyber attacks and pandemics, terming the greatest threat to be a “lack of clarity around governance,” The Ottawa Citizen says in a look at Canada’s abysmal critical infrastructure planning. Three Brit Muslims accused of conspiring with the July 7 suicide bombers have been linked to the homes used to manufacture the explosive devices by DNA evidence, The Times of London tells. Al Qaeda-linked Islamists are the primary suspects in Sunday’s bombing of a Catholic church in the southern Philippines Sunday, The Bangkok Post reports.

Cruel and Usual: “U.K. spooks have rejected FBI chief Robert Mueller’s criticism that they are not waterboarding enough terror suspects and described secret use of a far deadlier interrogation technique to get comparable results,” The Spoof spoofs. “’We just play them round-the-clock Cliff Richard hits,’ MI5’s Jonathan Evans said today, ‘starting with “Mistletoe and Wine.” After two hours of non-stop “logs on the fire and gifts on the tree” we’ve managed to smoke out four major planned European airport attacks, an African nuclear arms-smuggling cartel, the whereabouts of a huge Belgian weedkiller bomb factory and Mosley’s S&M Nazi orgy sex ring.’ Mueller, 61, has admitted he is secretly ‘very, very impressed’ at the British results and has opened negotiations about copyright and royalties for the Yuletide number one all-time favorite . . . Osama Bin Laden is still at large.”