Air travelers who can prove they don’t belong on terrorist watch lists could be spared extra scrutiny under a new program that addresses the public’s biggest complaint about aviation safety, Mike Chertoff tells USA Today’s Thomas Frank and Mimi Hall. The DHS chief, meanwhile, visited BWI yesterday to launch the promised Checkpoint Evolution prototype — termed “part of a broader effort to calm the checkpoint,” The Baltimore Sun’s Laura McCandlish mentions.

Feds: The House Judiciary chief threatens to subpoena ex-A.G. John Ashcroft and two others associated with the Bush administration’s interrogation policies if they don’t agree to testify, The Associated Press’ Laurie Kellman recounts. Just 13 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, Fort Huachuca is “the home of the Pentagon’s war on terror,” noted for training some of its most-talented intel operatives and interrogators, The Washington Times’ Sara A. Carter spotlights. “Behind FEMA and the IRS, the Transportation Security Administration is America’s least favorite government agency,” Bill Weir and Drew Millhon lead in a belated ABC News look at TSA’s newish passenger blog.

Poly-ticks: “You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic divisive principles,” The New York Times’ Kate Phillips has Barack Obama’s ex-pastor inconveniently proclaiming yesterday. Wright’s claims to the contrary, ex-U.S. ambassador Edward Peck “never said ‘America’s chickens are coming home to roost’ — nor did he suggest America engages in terrorism,” FOX News’ Brit Hume corrects. Last weekend, “FOX Newsand John McCain tried to convince voters that Obama was ‘endorsed’ by Hamas — a lie created by FOX News,” The Huffington Post’s Jeffrey Feldman huffs. The Republican National Committee is beefing about a new Democratic National Committee ad harping — albeit more accurately, this time — on McCain’s 100-years-in-Iraq line, the Times’ Kate Phillips recounts. The next president’s in-tray “will be filled with more trouble than any newcomer has faced” a maven tells The Times of London’s Bronwen Maddox, and the complexity of the problems “threaten to make any president, or any candidate, look bad.”

State and local: California’s homeland security shop is slated today to announce additional rail security grant funding to the Capitol Corridor and San Joaquin Corridor rail systems, NewsBlaze notes. A response drill in Pennsylvania’s Northampton County posited a full school bus driving into a pool of cyanide left by a tanker crash, WFMZ-TV 69 News notes. A locally popular Kurdish restaurateur says he is forced to sell his Michigan eatery to fight a deportation for former links to a terror-listed anti-Turkish group, The Michigan City News-Dispatch notes. Since enactment last year, the Legal Arizona Workers Act has inspired not one civil suit against an employer, but supporters say it’s a deterrent, no matter how it’s enforced, The Arizona Republic reviews.

Bid-ness: If the oil companies want to be rid of any liability under a new law allowing terror victims to pursue state assets, “they should be pressing Libya to make good on its [restitution] promises, not Congress to relieve Libya of the responsibility,” a Bloomberg columnist contends. Two energycompanies opening LNG ports off the Massachusetts coast say a veto-threatened bill charging the Coast Guard with enforcing security around gas terminals is no impediment, The Gloucester Daily Times tells — while The Baltimore Sun has federal regulators approving an LNG facility for Baltimore Harbor despite local terror worries. No way to say if it reflects the marketplace zeitgeist, but, because its “business model is changing rapidly,” Homeland Security Network Inc. is changing its name to Global Ecology Corporation, BusinessWire relays — while RTO Onlinehas the Small Business Administration proposing alternatives to DHS employee citizenship-verification procedures that would reduce the cost and impact on small biz.

Bugs ‘n bombs: Some 65 Nebraska emergency managers recently gathered for “a table top exercise to answer the question: What if the area was exposed to a foreign animal disease?” The Columbus Telegram leads — while AP spotlights Ag Department “tick riders” who patrol the southern border for stray livestock that might be carrying a tiny pest with a deadly disease into the United States. A bomb threat Saturday forced police to evacuate thousands from a Florida arena where a Bon Jovi concert was postponed for hours, The Miami Herald mentions.“With much less fanfare than the early days of the Cold War, the world is entering a new arms race, and with it, a dangerous new web of military relationships,” a Boston Globe piece reports.

Coming and going: To improve security and ease congestion, air passengers in the U.K. are to be screened with facial recognition technology rather than checks by passport officers, The Guardian reveals — and see commentary in The Independent: “Why, one might ask, are these changes being made now? You might ask again when you consider the track record of this technology.” A new program pairing a TSA employee with a bomb-sniffing dog to search cargo bound for passenger planes marks the first time TSA has used its own dog handlers for such a task, ABC News features. Despite new procedures, “immigration clearance took less than five minutes, and the officer always behaved like a gentleman,” a Malaysian Star reporter writes of her last three arrivals on these shores — while AP has Costa Rica filing a diplomatic protest over alleged “disrespectful” treatment of its attorney general at Miami’s airport.

Talking terror: “Identifying terrorists on the battlefield is relatively simple . . . The same cannot be said of the world’s most dangerous terrorists—the ones operating covertly inside the United States and Europe,” Malcolm Nance essays in Foreign Policy — and see a sidebar: “Meet the New Face of al Qaeda.” Philip Bobbitt’s “Terror and Consent” (Knopf) argues that al Qaeda represents a new form of highly decentralized, mass-murdering terrorism, and “should Osama bin Laden be defeated tomorrow, the kind of terrorism he pioneered is here to stay,” Daniel Byman reviews in The Washington Post. “The continued criminal activities of U.S. and international gangs, terrorists and extremists groups are representing a tremendous threat to homeland security, global security and civil society,” Shelley Smith essays for In Homeland Security. “Negotiating with one type of terrorist in order to isolate more-lethal terrorists has become a necessary but distasteful part of the post-Sept. 11 world,” The Christian Science Monitor concedes.

Rights and Wrongs: “It’s now being claimed that the administration’s legal advisers can be held responsible for detainee abuses. This is madness. The lawyers were not in any chain of command,” a Wall Street Journal op-ed objects. “Recent preventive detention measures have less to do with [surveillance] technology than with the nature of our current security environment. Preventive measures are more important for large-scale threats than law enforcement is,” a Slate columnist posts. If D.C. proceeds with plans to centralize monitoring of 5,000 surveillance cams, “we will need increased [privacy] safeguards, not an abandonment of carefully crafted regulations,” a Post op-ed objects. How is State’s ban on government employees publicly using the terms ‘jihad’ and ‘mujahidin’ going to work when, say, the “employee is a prosecutor or FBI agent responsible for describing a defendant’s words?” The Counterterrorism Blog asks.

Bar chat: Osama bin Laden’s former driver has joined other detainees in disdaining his war-crimes trial, disavowing any hope for justice after more than six years in confinement, AP reports — while Reuters has a disgruntled ex-military prosecutor testifying at a pre-trial hearing yesterday that the tribunal proceedings are “tainted.” Shortly before shooting six women at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, Naveed Haq had Googled randomly for a target, The Seattle Times has court testimony showing. “The story that began with a national terror alert slinks towards a pitiful finale — all eyes discreetly averted from the gamblers that just didn’t know when to quit,” a Miami Herald columnist writes of Justice’s planned third prosecution of the Liberty City Six. “Lawyers who represent suspects in terrorism-related investigations complain that their ability to do their jobs is being hindered by the suspicion that the government is listening in,” the International Herald Tribune spotlights.

Over there: “While 2007 was a mixed year for terrorism in Asia, the outlook for 2008 is still bleak in many countries,” The Bangkok Post surveys — while GMA News has Philippines officials claiming that 25 foreign terror suspects are operating in that country — three fewer than last year. Thai authorities, meantime, have broken up a criminal ring that produced hundreds of fake U.S. passports sold on the black market, The Washington Times tells. The CIA says the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor bombed by Israel could have produced enough plutonium for one or two bombs within a year of becoming operational, AP relates — as a Daily Telegraph item offers a convincing explanation of the roles of Israel, the United States and Syria in the incident.

The race is not to the swift: “The Democratic race for President has descended to ‘a level of meanness and acrimony that is damaging to American politics,’” The Borowitz Report has Swift Boat Veterans for Truth saying today. The Swift Boat group, which became famous in 2004 for attacking Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, said they were speaking out because ‘the current Democratic contest is giving swiftboating a bad name.’ ‘We have increasingly heard pundits accusing Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama of swiftboating each other,” said Swift Boat vet Tracy Klugian. “This hurts the reputation of swiftboating.” Klugian was quick to draw a distinction between what Sens. Clinton and Obama are doing and swiftboating, which he called “a noble profession.’ ‘When you try to destroy a member of another party, that’s swiftboating,’ Klugian. ‘When you do it to a member of your own party, that’s cannibalism.’”