A legal challenge by two environmental groups seeking to limit enhanced DHS powers to suspend more than 30 environmental laws to build the border fence is gathering support in Congress, The Houston Chronicle’s David McLemore relates — while The Imperial Valley News spotlights an April 28 House Natural Resources subcommittee field hearing about the waivers to be held on the fence-threatened U.T.-Brownsville campus. After four years of deferral, CBP has unveiled plans for a six-month pilot of an international registered traveler program at three airports, Aviation Week’s Benet Wilson reports. The FBI is resisting legislation to restrict the use of national security letters, saying the bureau already has tightened its rules, The Associated Press’ Laurie Kellman recounts.

Homeland hustings: If Senate Democrats have a good year, and it appears that they will, tie-breaking independent Joseph Lieberman seems sure to lose his homeland security chair, The Carpetbagger Report’s Steve Bennen spotlights. None of the candidates makes homeland security a priority, ex-DHSer Clark Ervin gripes to The Harrisburg Patriot-News, insisting: “This is a major, major issue, and they are only focusing on half of the coin.” Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J. is “silent” on domestic security and his use of DHS funding is “abhorrent,” The Daily Princetonian’s Tasnim Shamma quotes one of his many challengers. Ex-DHS chief and McCain ally Tom Ridge has endorsed GOPer Craig Williams’ run for Congress against incumbent Dem Joe Sestak, The Philadelphia Bulletin’s Bradley Vasoli reports. John McCain is attempting to reassure Americans that “I detest war” even as he strongly backs the current U.S. war strategy in Iraq, Reuters’ Steve Holland relates. A coalition of big-city mayors is quoting the three prez wannabes as backing for a gun control push, The Washington Post’s Michael D. Shear blogs.

Obama bin Laden: While questioning a weary-amused Barack Obama at a Monday media fest, AP’scontroversial chairman flubbed a reference to “Obama bin Laden” still being at large, Reuters’ Caren Bohan reports. Palestinians see Barack Obama as a candidate who “empathizes with Muslims even while willing to militarily take on Osama bin Laden and his ilk with or without the O.K. of Pakistan,” Daoud Kuttab asserts in a Jordan Times op-ed — as WorldNetDaily hammers anew on “the isolated Hamas terrorist organization [expressing] ‘hope’ Obama will win the presidential elections and ‘change’ America's foreign policy,” and Arutz Sheva’s Hana Levi Julian finds him “selective on terrorism” with his willingness to meet with Iran, but not Hamas. Obama “was warned at the time of 9/11 not to attempt a political career because of his menacing-sounding name,” The Times of London reminds. “The state police paved the way, Bristol Township police guarded the parking lot, the Secret Service worked the crowd [and thus] Barack Obama's sojourn into Lower Bucks County went off without a hitch,” The Courier Times recounts.

State and local: Working with 50 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, Shelby County Sheriff's deputies arrested 71 people, including 31 fugitives, during a 24-hour street sweep last weekend, The Memphis Commercial Appeal says. DHS plans to replace nine “virtual fence” camera towers along a 28-mile stretch of Arizona border by the end of 2008, The Daily Star says — while Champaign’s WAND-TV sees Illinois highway authorities installing new security cameras and emergency phones at rest areas around the state. State resistance to Real ID mandates illuminates the “limits beyond which Americans will refuse to go in the so-called ‘War on Terrorism,’” The Asset Protection Blog observes — as The Tufts Daily suggests the federal license effort will make it harder for under-age drinkers to forge state IDs.

Follow the money: For moderate Muslims in the U.S., sharia finance’s recent advances mean extremist imams can confront them about any non-Koran-compliant business interests, The Philadelphia Bulletin quotes a speaker. “As we continue to strengthen our homeland security, we cannot fail to shore up our nation's financial infrastructures,” ex-DHSer Asa Hutchinson writes in a Washington Timesop-ed touting electronic check transfers. Switzerland rejects a charge lodged by the Anti-Defamation League that a Swiss company could be underwriting terrorism with a multi-billion euro natural gas deal with Iran, Reuters reports. Bangladeshi and Indian intel agencies have named 10 Islamic charities believed to help finance and promote Islamist terrorism, Bangladesh’s Weekly Blitz relates. The United Arab Emirates calls “for stronger regional and international co-operation as it presses ahead with its ‘endless war’ against terror funding,” Emirates Business 24/7 enthuses. A new Israeli anti-drug campaign argues that substance abuse “provides a substantial source of funds for anti-Israel terror networks,” The Jerusalem Post reports.

Coming and going: “A shortcut through airport security lines isn't landing anytime soon at Sac International,” because there’s simply not enough terminal space for an exclusive separate screening line, a Sacramento Bee columnist explains. The chief security officer at Hyderabad’s airport has been busted for allegedly assaulting a customs official, The Times of India tells. The Port of Houston has named a veteran NASA exec to a newly created position directing security ops, The Houston Chronicle recounts — while CTV British Columbia has security concerns at the port forcing one of Vancouver’s most popular restaurants to move. “Government actions since 9/11 point clearly to how the U.S. government has set up a new Pentagon-like bureaucracy to fight a new kind of protracted domestic war against a new kind of domestic enemy - undocumented immigrants,” The Public Mind Magazine essays.

Bugs ‘n bombs: California faces an almost certain risk of being rocked by a strong earthquake by 2037, AP has scientists finding in the first statewide temblor forecast — while The Corvallis Gazette Times finds undersea microphones detecting an “unusual swarm of earthquakes off central Oregon, something that often happens before a volcanic eruption.” Muses Crypto-Gram’s Bruce Schneier: “Security is both a feeling and a reality, and they're different. You can feel secure even though you're not, and you can be secure even though you don't feel it.” To defend cities from nuclear, chemical or biological bombs, a Russian boffin proposes inflatable urban domes, Danger Room relates.

Terror tech: By issuing hand-held lie detectors to U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, Defense “is pushing to the battlefront a century-old debate over the accuracy of the polygraph,” MSNBC leads. “Is the Pentagon funding isomer bombs again?” Danger Room wonders - and see Popular Mechanics on “America's Robot Army: Are Unmanned Fighters Ready for Combat?” A retired FDNYer’s taste of the “steaming dust” at Ground Zero “made him determined to develop a protective Air Shield that might someday reduce the danger of inhaling toxic dust,” California News Wire relays. “In one of the most colossal blunders of the struggle against the terrorists, we have handed over the future of a vital tool in the projection of U.S. power,” AINA fulminates in re: the awarding of a USAF air tanker contract to a Euro consortium. A particle physicist who discovered the top quark now spends his days “trying to convince people that his new machine won't destroy the world,” the Los Angeles Times leads.

Cyberia: “It turns out al Qaeda's leader and his cohorts aren't the biggest threat to our cybersecurity. You are,” a CNET News column propounds. Australian companies “providing critical services to the economy” will be allowed to intercept employee e-mails under new counter-terror laws, Reuters reports. The German security team that produced the RFDump research/hacker tool for cloning and altering data stored on passport chips has — conveniently - now come out with a product to thwart RFID hackers, Threat Leveltells. Terror suspects held at one of Britain's most secure jails are secretly accessing the internet to contact their supporters, The Daily Mail mentions. The Army needs “a sophisticated information operations campaign that responds more rapidly than terrorists and insurgent groups to exploit the virtual battlefield,” an officer informsGovernment Executive. See, relatedly, what the CRS has to say on “Avatars, Virtual Reality Technology, and the U.S. Military: Emerging Policy Issues.”

Courts and rights: A Muslim cleric suspected in an alleged plot to blow up JFK airport has been hospitalized in Trinidad after suffering a mental breakdown, The Staten Island Advancepasses along. A Miami jury said in a second note yesterday that they can't agree on verdicts on any charge against any of the defendants in the Liberty City Six retrial, the Herald relays. A psychologist who interviewed a Black muslim in 2006 testified Monday that the murderer of a sheriff’s deputy is mentally “very sick” and “absolutely psychotic,” The Fresno Bee buzzes. If a civilian appeals court agrees to intervene on behalf of a Canadian Gitmo detainee, “it would provide new judicial oversight of the Bush administration's terrorism prosecution system,” AP reports.

Over there: Car bombs and suicide attackers killed nearly 60 people in central and northern Iraq “in a sign that al-Qaeda-in-Iraq is trying to make a comeback,” The Independent informs.Twelve terror suspects planned to bomb a packed sports stadium during the grand final match of the Australian Football League in 2005, The Melbourne Herald Sun has jurors being told yesterday. An independent report clears Berlin of knowing that the CIA transited three Egyptian terror suspects through Germany between 2001 and 2003, Agence France-Presse reports. Britain’s P.M. faces a cabinet revolt over controversial new terror laws amid concern in the government about an unprecedented collapse in his authority, The Times of London tells.

Old and in the way: “Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has been arrested on terrorism charges,” Unconfirmed Sources confirms. “Carter was apprehended today in front of his presidential library, taken into custody and charged with aiding and abetting terrorists. Carter was apparently making plans to meet with terrorist groups. ‘The nation is safe now that this terror supporter is behind bars,’ says an unnamed Justice Department official. ‘The subject, an 83-year-old white male was planning on meeting with members of the terrorist groups Hamas, Fatah, as well as persons of interest from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Israel. We believe we have disrupted a very serious terrorist information nexus.’ President Carter has been taken to a secure facility and is awaiting transfer to Guantanamo Bay for further questioning.” Check, also, on Onion Radio News: “Hillary Receives 3 a.m. Phone Call From Drunken Bill Clinton”