Of the 400,000 people on the terrorist watch list, “approximately 95 percent are not American citizens or legal residents; the number of U.S. persons is relatively minute,” Terrorist Screening Center chief Leonard Boyle reassures in a Washington Post op-ed. “What confidence can we have in a regime that is incapable of differentiating an Assistant U.S. Attorney General from a terrorist?” Paul Craig Roberts denounces in a CounterPunch slap at the much-derided evil-doers roster.

Feds: Air Force leaders sought for three years to spend $16.2 million in counterterrorism money on “comfort capsules” for top brass to be installed on military planes, the Post’s R. Jeffrey Smith reports. Euro-terrorists are trying to enter the U.S. with E.U. passports, and there’s no guarantee of stopping them, The Associated Press’ Eileen Sullivan has DHS chief Mike Chertoff complaining yesterday. A federal judge yesterday refused to delay the military trial of Osama bin Laden’s driver, which Guantanamo prosecutors say could start as soon as Monday, New York Times’ Scott Shane and William Glaberson recount — while Reuters’ Jim Loney notes widely different accounts of the way the defendant has been treated in U.S. custody.

McBama: “If I was Iranian, say, I'd be anxious that John McCain keeps joking in public about killing me,” The Independent’s Johann Hari comments. Post-surge security improvements in Baghdad allow McCain “now (perhaps for the first time) to point to an aspect of the war where he is able to argue that his judgment was superior to Obama’s,” ABC News’ Jake Tapper blogs. “More laughable than the notion of Obama as the second coming of JFK is the founding myth of the McCain campaign: (a) he is a war hero, and (b) said heroism increases his credibility on national security issues,” Ted Rall derides in Maui Time Weekly. By citing the 1993 and 2001 WTC bombings as proving terrorists seek to strike against new presidents, Sen. Joe Lieberman is “mangling the historical record to scare people into voting for McCain,” David Corn scorns for Mother Jones.

O’Cain: Hitting at Obama’s rhetoric on pursuing terrorists on Pakistani territory, McCain instead urges “convincing the Pakistanis that the fight against terrorism is their fight too,” The Associated Press of Pakistanapprovingly reports. Having encouraged isolating Iran, McCain was left with a hair-splitting reaction to State’s unexpected decision to meet tomorrow with an Iranian nuke official, and “more than one journalist concluded that this was advantage: Obama,” Tim Starks analyzes for Deutsche Welle. The latest in a series of TV spots touting Obama's national security proposals is now airing on national cable channels, The Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe blogs. As the New Yorker cover flap continues, Obama says the controversial cartoon “probably fuels some misconceptions” about him, ABC News’ Sunlen Miller mentions — and see Seattle Post-Intelligencer cartoonist David Horsey’s notion of a McCain cover satire.

State and local: More than a quarter of all buildings in six Willamette Valley counties would be destroyed in a major earthquake and some 1,000 people would die, The Oregonian cites from a state report. Oregon’s Cascade Locks, meantime, is pondering changes after a recent security breach at a water reservoir, Portland’s KATU-TV News notes. A private developer’s planned apartment complex on Manhattan’s West Side may be nixed by Port Authority security requirements, WNYC 93.9 FM broadcasts. The Lee County (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office is again conducting waterborne homeland training exercises, The Lehigh Acres Citizen says. A House move to extend “wild and scenic” environmental protection to a Bay State tract is a blow to developers who want to build an LNG terminal there that some fear might be a terror target, The Fall River Herald News notes.

Chasing the dime: According to U.S. intel obtained by Mexico City’s Proceso, Islamist groups have become associates of the Mexican drug cartels. The CEO of Airship Management Services Inc. tells The Greenwich (Conn.) Time his company's blimps will provide DHS with “long duration surveillance.” Now under Taliban control, Pakistan’s Ziarat marble quarry has brought in tens of thousands of dollars, illustrating how it uses income exacted to become a self-sustaining fighting force, The New York Times tells. Prices charged by cybercriminals selling hacked bank and credit card details have fallen sharply as the volume of data on offer has soared, Reuters cites from a new report. “We should be extremely concerned about the scope of the credit card fraud problem involving terrorists,” an American Chronicle contributor relatedly counsels.

Bugs ‘n bombs: Two Georgians have been handed brief prison terms for phoning a bomb threat to the CDC, The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer informs — while Texas Cable News sees hazmat crews called to an IRS building in Austin on “white powder” scares twice in five days. The Greensboro (N.C.) News Record reports an elderly man charged with making a bomb threat to a nursing care facility — while The Baltimore Sun has Ocean City cops finding an IED during a traffic stop. Backers of siting a DHS bio-lab in North Carolina have received a $262,000 PR grant from the state’s cigarette suit settlement fund, The Raleigh News & Observer reports. “Already Osama bin Laden has called for all Muslims in the United States to leave,” Paul M. Weyrich says in a National Ledger op-ed warning of& an imminent “American Hiroshima.” In another nuclear terrorism hearing Wednesday, the Senate homeland panel poked at the Global Nuclear Detection Architecture, The Hartford Courant recounts.

Planes and trains: Screeners seized a loaded .22 caliber handgun at the Pitt-Greenville Airport this week, The Daily Reflector relates. Atlantic City International Airport is becoming a TSA laboratory for new shoe-scanning technology and other advanced security measures, the Press reports — while Boston’s WBZ-TV has American Airlines jets testing an infrared Jeteye system that can identify and misdirect incoming missiles. “Some overworked airline personnel have [likely] already fantasized about such a device,” a Seattle Post-Intelligencercolumnist writes of proposed electro-shock bracelets for all fliers. Someone intending to derail a train chained a railroad tie to the Union Pacific railroad tracks last week, The Racine (Wisc.) Journal Times tells.

Coming and going: TSA’s transport worker ID effort is a central issue at the Port Security Seminar and Exhibition concluding in Houston today, GlobeSt.com relates. “Nothing is getting through here that's not thoroughly inspected,” a CBP agent reassures Burlington’s Fox 44 in re: the consolidation of Lake Champlain inspection stations. Citing flaws in DHS’s port security program, coastal senators, local port officials and unions are pushing for tougher security, but face industry resistance, Politico surveys. Invoking religious freedom, an Arizona Indian tribe wants DHS to halt construction of a border fence across its reservation, USA Today tells. More border states are enhancing driver's licenses to give residents more convenient ID for crossings, USA Today, again, surveys.

Courts and rights: A zero-tolerance approach to illegal border crossings is swamping the courts in Texas and other border states, The Dallas Morning News notes. A judicial order grants Justice's motion to dismiss additional charges against two of three men recently convicted on terror charges, The Toledo Blade tells. A U.S. appeals court this week upheld the dismissal of a libel lawsuit by an ex-Army scientist against The New York Times over columns implicating him in the 2001 anthrax attacks, Reuters reports. A Spanish court yesterday cleared four of the 21 people charged for crimes related to the deadly 2004 Madrid train bombings, Reuters reports.

Kulture Kanyon: “I felt my career was over, that nobody wanted to hire me after 9/11,” successful British-Iranian comedian Omid Djalilis tells The Montreal Gazette’s Bill Brownstein. Above all, Jane Mayer’s “The Dark Side” (Doubleday) “underscores one of the least remarked aspects of our nation's counterterrorist policy: the degree to which it has been driven not by spies or generals but by pasty men in ties,” Louis Bayard reviews for Salon. Forget the much-derided “terrorist fist-jab,” al Qaeda members “are likely to use a common Middle Eastern welcome consisting of a tight hug and three cheek-to-cheek embraces,” Slate’s Juliet Lapidos explains. &Mohamed Atta, “by his own account had sold stolen antiquities to finance the Sept. 11 attacks,” Geoffrey Clarfield remarks in a Toronto Globe and Mail feature urging an end to “appeasement of art and antiquities thieves.”

Art-schmart: “Israeli art has become particularly relevant in light of events that have shaken the West in the recent past: Immigration, borders, terrorism,” Sotheby’s Tel Aviv director tells The Jerusalem Post. “Ms. Homeland Security: Illegal Entry Dress Tent,” an artwork originally installed along the U.S./Mexican border in 2005, consumes a “hefty volume” of gallery space at a Wisconsin exhibit exploring clothes and politics, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel spotlights. An artist’s reproduction of the “Fat Man” nuclear device dropped on Nagasaki “is on display in Texas, where its mix of elegance and menace is stirring debate,” the L.A. Times reports. The subject of artist Steven’s Kurtz’s latest show “is a four-year federal criminal prosecution of Kurtz that began when petri dishes in his Buffalo home set off bio-terror alarm bells for police,” The Canadian Press spotlights.

The killing joke: “Citing what he called the ‘overwhelmingly positive response to my jokes about killing Iranians,’ presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain issued today a list of his favorite humorous remarks on the subject,” The Borowitz Report reports. “Introducing ‘John McCain's Top Ten Funniest Ways to Kill Iranians,’ a smiling McCain said, ‘My friends, in these trying times in which we live, there's one thing all Americans can agree on: killing Iranians is hilarious,’” Andy Borowitz writes. “McCain, who first joked about killing Iranians months ago by singing ‘bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran’ to the tune of the Beach Boys' hit ‘Barbara Ann’ and who last week commented that the U.S. could kill Iranians with cigarettes, was apparently ‘just warming up,’ one aide said today. McCain's list of funny ways to kill Iranians ranges from the caustic — ‘Send Iran lead-based hookah pipes from China’ - to the whimsical — ‘Tell Christie Brinkley that Iran has been cheating on her.’ The list ends with what McCain dubs the number one funniest way to kill Iranians: ‘Vote for me.