Gotham plans a new $30 million “super high-tech” NYPD command bunker in lower Manhattan to serve as the nerve center for crime fighting, as well as emergency response to terrorist attacks and natural disasters, The New York Post’s Murray Weiss and Angela Montefinise mention. Dedicated last Friday at a decommissioned military base, New Jersey’s Homeland Defense Technology Testbed Emergency Ops Center will debut this week in a federal-state response exercise that posits a “hurricane” approaching the National Capital Region, The New Jersey Herald’s Bruce A. Scruton relates.

Feds: It sometimes took months for terror-related intel obtained by DEA agents to be cabled to partner agencies such as the FBI and DHS, ABC News’ Justin Rood has a Justice IG report revealing. “The United States is facing a major obstacle in its efforts to deport thousands of illegal immigrants, including many convicted felons: Their home countries don’t want them back,” Cox News Service’s Eunice Moscoso leads. Now that CBP agents have unfettered access to laptops and other electronic devices at borders, a coalition of travel groups, civil libertarians and technologists is calling on Congress to rein in DHS’s search and seizure practices, The Register’s Dan Goodin relates. May is “resilience month” for the House homeland panel, with a key hearing slated for today, United Press International’s Shaun Waterman reminds in his review of the week ahead in homeland security.

Poly-ticks: The Dem candidates “avoid the term ‘Islamic terrorism,’ opting instead for ‘War on Terror,’ possibly out of a desire to avoid antagonizing the terrorist lobby. So too does President Bush himself,” Renew America’s Wes Vernon finger-wags. Barack Obama “is the man who would lead our efforts against terrorism yet was friendly with Bill Ayers, the unrepentant 1960s terrorist,” Fred Siegel frowns in an enumeration for The Australian of the Dem candidate’s alleged self-contradictions. Anti-Islamist crusader “Daniel Pipes has written at leastthreearticles asserting that Barack Obama had, in his childhood, been a practicing Muslim . . . There is something grotesque going on with some of Obama’s antagonists,” The New Republic’s Marty Peretz diagnoses. “International goodwill would be an excellent asset for charting a course to end the war in Iraq and to return the fight against terrorism to a sane path. John McCain’s belligerence suggests he can’t wait to squander this honeymoon,” Eric Rauchway rumbles in The New Republic.

Battlegrounds: Software tools being developed by a Canadian researcher to analyze text for signs of spin and deception that will ultimately be useful to anti-terror officials can also be employed to vet politicians’ statements, The Vancouver Sun spotlights. The Dem candidate for a New Hampshire Senate seat believes the Iraq War distracts “from the far greater threat to U.S. national security — terrorists holed up along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan,” The North Andover (Mass.) Eagle-Tribune’s John Milne mentions. “By sheer coincidence, the Democratic Party of Georgia has a bumper crop of militaryveterans running for office this year, a slate that could prompt” a rethink about the party’s position on security issues, Morris News Service’s Walter C. Jones surveys. The prez contenders “are sounding entirely D.C.-centric, even though many of the bold campaign promises about . . . homeland security and immigration stand on the shoulders of states and localities,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Paul L. Posner protests.

State and local: The FBI said Monday it is looking into whether a pipe bomb attack at a San Diego federal courthouse is linked to a blast at a FedEx office last month, AP relates. The Arizona Republic has that state’s Senate lending preliminary approval to a bill barring any state participation in the federally mandated Real ID program. “It’s definitely a scary thought, especially since there’s so much unknown in that,” one of three Ohio sisters who’ve joined the National Guard confesses to AP of the likelihood her air defense unit will be activated for homeland security duties in Washington, D.C. Some Texas border landowners “still hope they can convince the rest of America that 18-foot steel fence segments will do more harm to border communities than good in solving the problems of illegal immigration,” The Texas Observer blogs.

Bid-ness: Ever since 9/11, “companies, institutions and individuals have looked at surveillance very differently,” a USA Today analyst’s homeland market report leads. In an odd twist for the faltering effort to defend against another anthrax attack, Emergent Biosolutions yesterday announced having bought for $2 million an anthrax vaccine from a company that federal health officials dropped in 2006, The San Jose Mercury News notes. Most U.S. firms have a formal, written plan for emergency preparedness, but a widely adopted certification standard for such plans has yet to be imposed, Al Bawaba relays from a Conference Board report. A 2000 contract from ICE’s predecessor for 1,000 private prison beds in San Diego was one of a series of federal contracts credited with saving the private prison industry, while marking a turning point in the way immigrant detainees are held, the Times-Union spotlights.

Coming and going: Marking yet another air hub that TSA has brought on board for the new approach, Dallas’s Love Field is now offering three screening lanes for different types of travelers, the Morning News notes — while The Torrance (Calif.) Daily Breeze finds LAX in receipt of new X-ray machines offering a clearer look inside carry-on bags. “A tip-off that instantly raised fears of a 9/11-type scenario,” concerning a New York-bound Delta flight, roiled Mumbai’s airport Friday, The Times of India informs. DHS is preparing to test high-tech buoys adapted from Cold War-era Navy technology that could act as an offshore early warning system against a terrorist attack by sea, USA Today tells. DHS officials are moving into a police substation in Kodiak, Alaska, to begin issuing secure Transportation Worker ID Cards to port employees, the Daily Mirror mentions.

Talking terror: “You might think that the raid on the dissident Mormon compound in Texas and its aftermath are not related to terrorism, but they actually are,” Jeffrey Breinholt leads in The Counterterrorism Blog. “When security is at stake, there is no limit to fear or fortification. Fear, in other words, is a tax, and al Qaeda and its ilk have done better at extracting it from Americans than the IRS,” Josef Joffe asserts in the Post. Perhaps the best example of a politician exploiting the “blueprint created by our education system” to advantage “was the push for the war on terror by making terrorism analogous to a disease,” Patrick Grumley and Matt Leighton ponder for The Minnesota Daily. The resuscitated U.S. Fourth Fleet “being used to threaten our countries serve[s] to sow terror and death, but not to fight terrorism or illegal activities,” Fidel himself — or his ghostwriter — accuses in Granma.

Tactics: “The key to defeating al Qaeda doesn’t lie in trying to undermine its extremist ideology but in defeating its strategy. And right now, Washington has a historic opportunity to do just that,” Russell D. Howard and Erik Iverson assert in The Christian Science Monitor. “The categorical failure of our political leadership nearly seven years after 9/11 to engage in even the slightest effort to assess exactly who the enemy is and how they propose to attack and defeat us borders on treason,” Patrick Poole propounds in American Thinker. Seemingly having “all but disappeared” from Afghanistan’s Jalalabad, al Qaeda “is on the run, too, in Iraq, and that raises some interesting questions about how to pursue this terrorist enemy,” the Post’s David Ignatius also ruminates.

Courts and rights: The explosives-possession trial of an ex-Florida student was postponed yesterday, the day it was to start, and the defendant released on bail, The Tampa Tribune tells. In the Toledo terror trial, the defense is focusing on undermining the informer who fingered the three defendants, the Blade reports. U.S. officials think it is highly unlikely that any of the Guantanamo detainees will see a trial before the Bush administration ends, the Times reports — while AP has an appeals court panel considering whether to release the identities of some detainees who suffered mistreatment. The Florida Supreme Court yesterday heard arguments on whether the federal government and a private laboratory have liability in the anthrax death of a supermarket tabloid staffer in 2001, The Tallahassee Democrat relays.

Over there: Kenyan anti-terror officials are on high alert following the killing in a U.S. attack of an Islamist said to be the al Qaeda leader in Somalia, Nairobi’s Daily Nationnotes. Due to a heavy influx of undocumented migrants, State Department report considers Malta a potential and increasingly attractive staging post for terrorists seeking clandestine entry into Europe, The Malta Independent spotlights — while The Taipei Times touts that same report as praising Taiwan’s counterterror contributions. The pacifist Awami National Party, which leads Pakistan’s ruling coalition in the Taliban-dominated North West Frontier Province, espouses a nonviolent approach to tackling extremism, The Christian Science Monitor surveys.

No shadow of doubt: “Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has announced plans to use spy satellites, drone aircraft, and surveillance cameras to track the movements and activities of anyone who casts a shadow,” The Spoof spoofs. “Persons seen casting shadows at airports will also be subjected to new mandatory tertiary searches of all luggage, clothing, toiletries, and body cavities,” Gene Mason writes. “‘Millions of Americans are afraid of their own shadows, and with good reason. Terrorists and their victims are known to cast shadows. If you see your own shadow or someone else’s, danger could be imminent,’ Chertoff said yesterday. Brushing aside questions about crippling flight delays and further infringements upon civil liberties, Chertoff noted, ‘We are at war. Everything changed on 9/11. The next shadow could be cast by the flash of a nuclear explosion.’”