“At least in its domestic homeland security aspects, the so-called War on Terror shows clear signs of having developed into a popularly supported governmental perpetual-motion machine,” John Mueller maintains in The American Interest Magazine — while CyberCast News Service’s Evan Moore skeptically explores the overreaction thesis, and Capitol Hill Blue waxes paranoid over the weeklong continuity of operations exercise FEMA kicks off tomorrow.

Feds: Democratic and Republican senators alike yesterday “once again piled criticism upon forthcoming Real ID requirements, with some renewing calls to repeal the law for which many of them voted years ago,” CNET News’ Anne Broache recounts — while The Associated Press’ Pamela Hess has the Senate Intelligence Committee again voting to bar CIA interrogators from waterboarding prisoners. Gotham’s mayor says if he were president, he would give out DHS money based on need, not as it’s currently doled out — like peanut butter, with everyone getting some, The New York Sun’s Grace Rauh reports.

Poly-ticks: “As long as the Homeland Security Administration [sic] is in place, our liberties will be in jeopardy,” Libertarian prez contender Michael Jingozian essays for Third Party Watch. Handing a possible issue to John McCain, who eschews the practice, a report finds Hillary Clinton requested nearly $2.3 billion in federal earmarks for 2009 — much of it for homeland security projects — three times more than any other senator, The New York Times’ Tobin Harshaw blogs. In the first detailed analysis of potential immigrant voters and their children in California legislative districts, a study shows they could constitute nearly one-third of state voters by 2012, the Los Angeles Times’ Teresa Watanabe tells. “I suspect that U.S. domestic politics is the primary reason the White House has all but ignored this report, at least in public,” Jonathan Morgenstein hazards for The Washington Post in re: the GAO’s warning about a reconstituted al Qaeda plotting in Pakistan.

State and local: A New York appeals court upheld a verdict finding the Port Authority negligent in safeguarding the World Trade Center before the 1993 terror attack, the Times tells. A New Jersey State Police veteran with counterterror experience as a Navy reservist has been tapped as deputy director for ops in the Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, The Asbury Park Press reports. Massively stepped-up security at the Brooklyn Federal Court “is a new phenomenon in federal court, where it has not been well received by some judges and defense lawyers,” The New York Daily Newsnotes. Arizona’s governor has vetoed legislation to require police departments and sheriff’s deputies to do more to crack down on illegal immigration, The Arizona Daily Star says.

Follow the money: Cigarette smuggling is generating millions of dollars every year that can be reaching terrorist groups, FOX News cites from a Republic House staff report. “Despite being short on cash, al Qaeda and like-minded global jihadist terrorist groups still pose an acute threat,” a survey in West Point’s CTC Sentinel assesses. A global onslaught against the Liberation Tigers’ international fundraising network coincides with the domestic reverses the terror-insurgents have suffered within Sri Lanka, Asia Times surveys. Interpol has issued an arrest warrant for an Irish national who has been described by Treasury as a central fundraiser for al Qaeda in Europe, Ireland’s Sunday Business Post reports — as CNN finds a Spanish al Qaedaite financing terror cells from his monitored prison cell, making money transfers worth $3.8 million. Because it has not passed any anti-terrorism laws, Costa Rica is close to being expelled from the Egmont Group, a G8 body that shares intel and monitors suspicious or unusual financial transactions, Costa Rica News relays.

Air wars: For the second time this year, a passenger was able to carry a knife inadvertently past a federal security checkpoint at Newark’s airport without being detected, The Star-Ledger relates.A Grand Rapids airport security breach allowed an unscreened man to board a Northwest Airlines plane, causing a 40-minute delay as the entire plane disembarked, The Grand Rapids Press reports — as The South Florida Sun-Sentinel has a man who cried “bomb” as a Fort Lauderdale-Nassau flight was preparing to take off removed from the plane and charged.Accused of short-staffing, the TSA’s Atlanta office is under increasing pressure to reduce security lines at that city’s airport, the Journal-Constitution recounts — while the Advertiser identifies Honolulu International as one of 20 airports where CBP’s “Global Entry” model will improve the process of clearing and welcoming overseas arrivals, and Mid-Hudson News finds New York State’s Stewart Airport boasting all the latest in TSA baggage screening tech. Screening officers at a British Columbia airport “have been targets of shameful verbal attacks on their integrity, intelligence, education and honesty” since an AIDS group was “humiliated” by a guard, a union official complains in The Prince George (B.C.) Citizen.

Coming and going: Although Greyhound has since joined the business, the big bus interests have exploited post-9/11 security concerns in opposing small curbside intercity bus services, The San Jose Mercury Newsnotes. Austin bus riders are aroil over the Texas governor’s demand to close a key transfer point near the state capital for security reasons, the American-Statesman mentions. Florida’s 14 public ports “are about to lose their competitive edge . . . unless the Florida Legislature acts to stop the implementation of duplicative and burdensome security regulations,” a state pol warns in Jacksonville’s Florida Times-Union. Long Island boaters are happy to aid DHS’s initiative to enlist small craft owners against WMD attacks, but would oppose new regulations that could come with the plan, Newsday notes — while The Observer serves up more on that fascinating conflation of terrorism and high legend: the Somali pirates.

Terror tech: Customs officials in South Korea — where the world’s first canine clone was produced — last week unveiled seven cloned Labrador retrievers being trained to sniff out drugs and explosives, AP reports. The Pentagon’s “madcap scheme to build a robotic spy plane that can stay aloft for five years has produced its first concept art!” Danger Roomexclaims. The top U.S. military intel agency has come up with a new tool for teaching recruits critical thinking skills: videogames, Wired relates. “New York has an audacious blueprint to wrap a high tech cloak around lower Manhattan. It will provide the most sophisticated armor of any major urban area in the world — one that relies on brains as much as brawn,” Wired leads.See a CRS threat assessment on “High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse and High Power Microwave Devices” — then check Slate on why ‘machines are crucial to defeating terrorism,” and reference, finally, the Quantum Sleeper, an enclosed double bed “designed for maximum protection in various hostile environments.”

Cyberia: Despite Mike Chertoff’s warning of “zombie computer” attacks, “the threat hasn’t affected any efforts within DHS, who still have only one employee charged with preventing such attacks on their own systems,” a Daily Mississippian op-ed objects. “Terrorist groups have computer skills, they have been actively trying to recruit programmers and they are raising increasing amounts of money through cybercrime,” meaning a cyber attack is nigh, a cyberexpert tells The Melbourne Age. British securicrats are “very concerned” about possible critical infrastructure attacks launched using mobile devices, ZDNet notes. “The tools of the so-called Web 2.0 world [have] drawn the concern of lawmakers, who are searching for ways to make them available to [security agencies] as well as understand how terrorists might also be employing them,” Scientific American spotlights. The quarter-million dollars’ worth of anti-terror cyber-gear the United States has provided Jordan includes special forensic computers used to track cybercrime and terrorists online, The Jerusalem Post relays.

Courts and rights: A man arrested in January for allegedly carrying a loaded shotgun and a three-foot-long sword near the U.S. Capitol told a D.C. jury yesterday that his case was a federally contrived “legal conspiracy,” The Washington Post reports. Over defense objections, prosecutors want to use military videos seized from a terror-accused Florida ex-student’s family computer in his trial next week, The Tampa Tribune tells. “Outside of the Bush administration, there is near-universal bipartisan agreement that Guantanamo should be shut down and the military commissions scrapped,” a Slate columnist comments. At a hearing in Ottawa yesterday, a U.S. military lawyer called on Canada to repatriate a young terror detainee from Gitmo, where he faces a life sentence, The CanWest News Service says — while The Miami Herald has the former driver of Osama bin Laden’s announcing a boycott and walking out of his tribunal proceedings yesterday.

Over there: Iran says a “disastrous situation” facing the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan coupled with Washington’s domestic issues made any U.S. attack on the Islamic Republic unlikely, Reuters reports. What is currently termed “the Taliban” numbers some 10,000 fighters and “draws its strength less from religious zeal than from its ties to heroin smugglers,” a Wall Street Journalcolumnist writes in contending that the United States is not “losing Afghanistan.” Algeria warns its North African neighbors that al Qaeda terrorists are planning “spectacular attacks” to destabilize local governments, The Washington Times tells. Britain has become the main focus of Islamist terror in Europe, The Daily Telegraph cites from Interpol figures. The European Parliament’s vote last week to take the Peruvian guerrilla group known as the Tupac Amaru off its terrorist list has Peru in an uproar, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Do It Yourself: “I got to thinking about the various government programs which allege to protect us against terrorism and the like,” Bob Pagani posts on RadioShack’s Invention Lab. “That caused me to wonder if there wasn’t something the average person could do on an individual basis to help protect America. I started tinkering around with some off-the-shelf things I had lying around and eventually I came up with my Homeland Security Helmet. As you can see, it has a video camera on the right side, two lights to illuminate the area in front of the user, a scrolling LED ‘billboard’ which announces to passersby that it is a Homeland Security Helmet and a blinking blue light on top to notify people that videotaping is in progress.” Sounds sweet, though one commenter cautions: “I strongly believe that wearing this Homeland Security Helmut would present itself as a target for al Querdo terrorists.”