A DHSer spent a weekend in February loading up a U-Haul truck — with budget documents, headed for 60 of the subcommittees with jurisdiction over the department, Federal Times’ Gregg Carlstrom leads on heavy handed Hill oversight. “Three years later, we have been generally pleased with the results of our reforms,” Sens. Joseph Lieberman and Susan Collins write in a Washington Times op-ed praising the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act.

Feds: President Bush yesterday threatened to veto an $8.4 billion Coast Guard bill because it would make the agency enforce security zones around LNG terminals, The Associated Press’ Andrew Miga relates. Airline officials say an industry already reeling from fuel prices, safety concerns and mergers cannot shoulder the cost of fingerprinting exiting foreigners, and should not be doing DHS’s work in any event, United Press International’s Shaun Waterman writes. FEMA has no plans to release all the details of a national terrorism exercise under way this week or more details from 2005’s “TOPOFF-4” drill, AP’s William McCall mentions. See, hot off the CRS press, “Data Mining and Homeland Security: An Overview.”

Poly-ticks: “The huge spread in male and female views [is] pronounced in the terrorism war,” Earl Ofari Hutchinson contends in an AlterNet take on Hillary Clinton’s gender challenge, noting that many more men than women take a tough stance on terror-sympathizing nations. On the eve of Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary, “Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11,” a New York Times editorial condemns — while Reuters’ David Morgan finds her warning Tehran that if she were president, the United States could “totally obliterate” Iran in retaliation for a nuclear strike against Israel. “We can be a party that thinks the only way to look tough on national security is to talk, and act, and vote like George Bush and John McCain. We can use fear as a tactic, and the threat of terrorism to scare up votes,” Barack Obama scorned in his concession Tuesday, Agence France-Presse reports.

Define that candidate: The author of the famous 1988 Willie Horton ad will begin a campaign to tar Barack Obama as weak on crime and terrorism, Time Magazine’s Michael Scherer mentions. A small-town South Carolina pastor who has put up a sign linking Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden insists “the message wasn’t meant to be racial or political,” Greenville’s WYFF 4 relates — while Politico has a poll finding that 15 percent of voters think Obama is a Muslim. Muslim-American community leaders, activists and voters in Philadelphia — an urban “Mecca for U.S. Muslims” — say Obama is “by far their preferred candidate,” Al Jazeera recounts. If Americans “are again attacked by jihadists, they will be lectured by [Obama] about how black enslavement, his white grandmother, Israel . . . and their own ‘cynicism’ played a role in convincing the jihadists to kill innocents,” according to a Jerusalem Post op-ed terming the candidate a “fascist.”

State and local: While locals have a keen grasp of this region’s vulnerabilities . . . could even we honestly believe we’re more at risk than Washington and New York?” The Hampton Roads (Va.) Daily Press asks in re: Risk Analysis Journal’s recent terror target rankings. Colorado has been awarded a $14.3 million federal grant to improve public safety comm systems, The Rocky Mountain News notes. A transportation policy bill that bars Real ID act compliance is headed to Minnesota’s governor, despite his repeated veto threats, The St. Paul Pioneer Press relates. “With the increased threat of terrorism, the types of hazards that firefighters may face have expanded dramatically,” a FireRescue1 op-ed observes.

This is just a test: A statewide earthquake drill was staged in Washington yesterday, The Tacoma News Tribune tells — while APfinds National Guards crawling through tons of broken concrete and twisted metal in Tennessee “to get a feel for what they’ll face if a major temblor hits the central United States,” and The Reno Journal-Gazettetakes note of “an evacuation drill designed to prepare western Washoe Valley residents for fire season.” Not least, a South Carolina exercise this week tests the National Guard’s response to “a domestic emergency,” The Orangeburg Times and Democratrelates. Bay State securicrats view mass events such as Monday’s Boston Marathon as “planned disasters” for the purpose of testing approaches that would be taken in a real natural catastrophe or terrorist attack, The Boston Globe recounts.

Coming and going: “In a decision that should be hotly contested but likely won’t be,” an appeals court has ruled that laptop content may be searched by screeners “without suspicion of wrongdoing. In short, probable cause doesn’t apply,” TechRepublic relates. TSA’s newly renovated security checkpoint at Nashville’s airport boasts “a skylight, raised ceilings, more space to move and a soon-to-be-operating rock waterfall wall,” The Tennessean tells — while Business Traveler News has an upgraded Detroit terminal soon to be sporting a “centralized baggage system with complete inline screening system.” If airport CBP officials “weren’t doing this job, I wonder what they would be doing. Not greeting customers at Wal-Mart, that’s for sure,” an MSNBC columnist grumps. DHS is scrapping a $20 million “virtual fence” prototype on the Arizona-Mexico border because the system is failing to adequately alert border patrol agents to illegal crossings, AP reports.

Courts and rights: Despite two mistrials, federal prosecutors say they will try a third time to convict six men charged with scheming with al Qaeda to topple Chicago’s Sears Tower, The Miami Herald mentions. Three men accused of plotting to recruit and train terrorists to attack U.S. and allied troops met only once during the two years an undercover informant investigated them, AP has that agent testifying yesterday. A Muslim medical student arrested last September carrying a loaded assault rifle through a Dearborn park has been bound over for trial, The Press & Guide reports. A Chicago ruling orders DHS and the FBI to turn over records showing whether 10 plaintiffs — repeatedly detained at airport check points — are on the government’s radar, The Chicago Tribune tells.

Ivory (Watch) Towers: The University of Missouri’s international student czar wishes he could focus on his foreign scholars, “but 95 percent of the staff’s time goes to helping [ICE] keep track of foreign students,” The Kansas City Star says — while The Chronicle of Higher Education sees DHS planning to double its student visa fee. “Two self-labeled terrorists-turned-peace activists will speak next week at the University of Colorado — and some students . . . say they fear the paid guests will spread hateful, anti-Islamic messages,” The Daily Camera records. Ohio State University’s ROTC cadets have ended the decades-long practice of combat training with mock rifles on the main campus because of post-Virginia Tech public edginess, The Columbus Dispatch records. An Arizona bill would bar the state’s public schools from lessons that “overtly encourage dissent” from “American values,” including democracy, capitalism, pluralism and religious tolerance, The East Valley Tribune relates. An Israeli newspaper has Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu telling an audience at Bar Ilan University last week that the 9/11 terror attacks had been beneficial for Israel, Haaretzrelays.

Over here: “While homegrown Muslim extremists have proven more lethal in Europe than in the United States, U.S. authorities continue to worry about the prospect of attacks by militant Muslims who are American citizens,” a CFR analyst blogs in the Post. The arrest last week of a Brit student on suspicion of terrorism came — unusually — from a tip-off within the Muslim community itself, BBC News notes. A coalition of American Muslim groups is demanding McCain stop using the adjective “Islamic” to describe terrorists and extremist enemies of the United States, The Washington Times relates. “The British government has attempted to deal with Muslim extremism by dishonestly pretending that extremists are not Muslims. They are. They just happen to be extreme Muslims,” a Family Security Matters op-ed objects. “Well before Sept. 11th, U.S. intelligence agencies had suspicions about the connections between Islamic charities and terrorism,” The New Yorker spotlights. The parents of a nine-year-old boy named Islam are pressing discrimination charges after a French TV production excluded their son because of his name, Pakistan’s Daily Times tells.

Holy Wars: Osama bin Laden’s chief deputy “accuses Shiite Iran of trying to discredit the Sunni al Qaeda terror network by spreading the conspiracy theory that Israel was behind the Sept. 11 attacks,” AP reports. “The West has promoted democracy everywhere except in the Islamic world. The West may not exert a direct colonial influence, but its influence is palpable nonetheless . . . At least many Muslims believe this to be the case,” Kishore Mahbubani essays in The Globalist. “Eventually, it will become apparent that the ignorance of rage that characterizes our ‘War on Terror’ will betray this government, this nation and its people,” a Nolan Chart contributor forecasts. “Operations in Iraq have had a negative impact on all other efforts in the war on terror,” McClatchy Newspapers quotes from a paper by an ex-Don Rumsfeld deputy. And check a newly updated CFR Backgrounder on the mother of all terror cells, al Qaeda.

Keystone Kapers: “Presumptive GOP nominee John McCain appeared at a mammoth rally in Philadelphia last night to celebrate the results of the Pennsylvania primary, calling the contest ‘a huge victory for me and my campaign,’” The Borowitz Report reports. A jubilant McCain said that as the results poured in, “It became abundantly clear that the people of Pennsylvania want to send the Republicans back to the White House for another four years.” At a campaign rally of her own, Hillary Clinton also savored the results of the primary, declaring that she was ‘one step closer to getting my hands on a nuclear bomb,’” Andy Borowitz writes. “Turning towards her husband, former President Bill Clinton, she said, ‘I hope that my having a nuclear arsenal at my command will make you think twice before you do anything foolish this time.’ Blood visibly draining from the former president’s face, Clinton glared at him sternly, adding, ‘I’m not kidding.’ ” And click on Onion Radio News: “Mysteriocrats Nominate Shadowy Figure For President.”