The FBI views firebombings against two U.C. Santa Cruz scientists as the latest attack against animal-experimentation researchers, The San Jose Mercury News’ Joshua Molina reports — while McClatchy Newspapers has the Animal Liberation Front defending such attacks as “necessary.” The FBI counts some 1,100 nationwide incidents of domestic terrorism attributable to animal-rights and environmental groups, The Santa Cruz Sentinel’s Kurtis Alexander surveys.

Feds: Dozens of mayors and police chiefs want Washington to focus more on fighting crime and less on counterterrorism, The Washington Post’s Holly Watt writes. TSA may allow airports to ban firearms from areas where many states currently allow concealed carry of lethal weapons, USA Today’s Thomas Frank relates. DHS’s new electronic visa waiver system “is fraught with the hangovers of its predecessor, and entry to the United States is still dependent on the decision of [a CBP] official,” The Times of London’s Ginny McGrath spotlights. “Bruce Ivins, the alleged anthrax terrorist, did his best to tie his deadly mailings to al Qaeda,” but his planning apparently predated 9/11, Danger Room’s Noah Schachtman leads. “What Ivins’ motive might have been remains unclear,” Newsweek updates — while the Post has revelations about his mental instability causing worry about biological material security, and The Christian Science Monitor ponders how the government scientist kept his clearance.

Poly-ticks: A man who kept weapons in his hotel room and car appeared in a Miami court Thursday for threatening to assassinate Barack Obama, The Associated Press’ Curt Anderson recounts. According to FEC filings, Obama “has received illegal donations from Palestinians living in Gaza, a hotbed of Hamas terrorists,” OneNewsNow’s Jim Brown alleges — while The Wall Street Journal’s Glenn R. Simpson and Amy Chozick say Obama’s Muslim-outreach coordinator “has resigned amid questions about his involvement in an Islamic investment fund,” and see The New York Times’ Michael Luo on questions about John McCain’s Arab American donors. McCain “has a vision of America safe from the tyranny of Islamic terrorism where Americans are free to pursue the virtues of hard work,” Terence Smith praises in TheHarrisburg Patriot-News — as Media Transparency’s Bill Berkowitz allows that Obama “is no Manchurian candidate for Islam, but neither does he represent any new politics.”

State and local: The feds are giving St. Paul police $50 million to cover everything from new bikes to extra staff for the GOP Convention, KSTP 5 News recounts. Goats broke through a fence meant to keep terrorists out of Staten Island’s Fort Wadsworth, NY1 notes — and see the Advance’s reassuring editorial. A Virginia county jail spent $800,000 more than expected to hold illegal immigrants over the last year, the Post reports. Mississippi’s enthusiasm could give it an edge in securing a $450 million DHS bio-lab, The Jackson Clarion-Ledgerwants to believe. Tussling continues over security-related restrictions on traffic past Colorado’s Dillon Dam, The Vail Daily records.

Chasing the dime: Border dwellers “are stuck between a push for better national security and a need to improve a lackluster rural economy,” The Helena Independent Record rues. The Red Cross hosts a free business continuity planning course for area entrepreneurs next month, Paducah’s WKYX AM 570 alerts. DHS’s Mike Chertoff hit Silicon Valley this week to highlight ID theft, as in the acquisition of 40 million card numbers from eight major U.S. retailers unveiled Tuesday, San Jose’s ABC 7 News says — and catch The Threat Level Q&A with Chertoff. Boeing Co. spent $3.2 million lobbying in the second quarter, not least for DHS’s virtual fence project, Forbes relays. Following last week’s passenger beheading and cannibalization, Greyhound Canada is pulling the ad campaign slogan: “There’s a reason you’ve never heard of bus rage,” The Windsor Star says — and see The National Post on PETA’s stillborn display ad.

Bugs ‘n bombs: One of three charged in two downtown San Diego pipe bombings last April pleaded not guilty Wednesday, the Times-Union tells.“Oklahoma is an ideal target for agroterrorism,” Lawton’s KSWO News 7says, reporting a bid to prepare the farming community for attack. The world is ignoring an “inevitable” flu pandemic which could kill 50 million and wreak massive disruption worldwide, The Independent finds the House of Lords warning. “Yes, there are risks associated with performing research on high-risk zoonotic diseases,” but DHS’s planned bio-lab “is both necessary and wise, and should be supported,” ThreatsWatchproclaims. “I get the sick feeling the tragic church shooting won’t be the last such horrific terrorist incident,” a Detroit Free Press editorial concludes of the July 27 Unitarian Universalist bloodbath.

Coming and going: A St. Paul mom was told five years ago that her 2-year-old son was on a terror watch list — and he’s still grounded, The Minneapolis Star Tribune leads. Security is the loser when DHS terror-lists individuals “based on their dissent, not their danger,” an alleged victim of such chides in The Buffalo News. Forty-one fledgling port security officers graduated in Kingston this week “with a stern warning not to engage in corrupt practices,” The Jamaica Observer observes. “It’s like getting a Ph.D. in port security when you go to New York,” Virginia’s port security czar, a veteran of Gotham’s Coast Guard station, tells The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. Among other alleged offenses, the annual Seafair “distracts the Coast Guard from its homeland-security duties elsewhere,” Crosscut Seattle grumbles.

Border wars: No one showed up Tuesday as a new ICE program encouraging illegals to leave voluntarily began a trial run, Los Angeles Times blogs. DHS is racing toward a Dec. 31 deadline to raise 670 miles of border barriers, about half of which are completed, Agence France-Presse updates. A Border Patroller was held at gunpoint Sunday by Mexican troops who had crossed the border into Arizona, The Washington Times tells. USCIS is close to improving the E-Verify system for electronically checking workers’ citizenship, The Omaha World-Herald quotes its acting chief. New e-passports, ostensibly foolproof against identity theft, can be cloned and manipulated in minutes, The Times of London tells.

Guantanamo Bay Watch: Military jurors yesterday gave al Qaeda chauffeur Salim Hamdan 5-1/2 years, a relatively light sentence for terror abetting that amounts to five months with time served, The Washington Post reports — which The Times of London terms a “disaster” for President Bush. “We now have a concrete record of a completed trial that seems to have been scrupulously deferential to Hamdan’s right to a fair proceeding,” The National Review exults — as a Huffington Postposter dismisses the proceedings as “a joke,” and CounterPunch snidely asks if “Americans are still at risk until we capture bin Laden’s dentist, barber, and the person who installed the carpet in his living room?” The tactic of constantly moving detainees to make them sleepy and disoriented was far more widespread than previously stated and still used months after being banned in 2004, The Washington Post, again, relates.

Over there: U.S. News marks the “grim anniversary” yesterday of simultaneous al Qaeda strikes on two U.S. embassies 10 years back. A French appeals court this week freed a former Red Brigades terrorist for health reasons, but an order for her extradition to Rome still pends, Time Magazine tells — while CNNsees Britain asking the European Court of Human Rights for a quick ruling on a radical imam cleared for extradition to the United States on terror charges. “For their high-security Beijing Olympics, Chinese police have their bomb detectors and metal detectors. They could do with an absurdity detector, too,” AP leads — even as Reuters reports a little-known Islamist group threatening the games and urging Muslims to keep away.

Kulture Kanyon: An educational “Scan-It” toy helps “children understand the importance of homeland security by exposing them to the ins and outs of airport security checkpoints,” InventorSpot’s Vicki Kwong spotlights. The Pentagon has p.o.ed anthropologists by asking “eggheads” to unravel terrorist recruitment, the Taliban’s resurgence and other jihadish mysteries, the Post’s Maria Glod mentions. “A prominent American movie critic stands to lose about $12,000 cash after U.S. border guards found the undeclared money in the man’s cigar box at the Windsor-Detroit tunnel,” The Windsor (Ont.) Star’s Dalson Chen leads. Host Jon Stewart, of “The Daily Show” (Comedy Central), “is no different than Rosie O’Donnell, who hilariously and very seriously, claimed that 9/11 was an inside job,” Michael P. Tremoglie trashes in The Philadelphia Bulletin. Coney Island’s “Waterboard Thrill Ride” lets the rubes watch animatronic figures simulate an interrogation, The New York Times’ Ariel Kaminer spotlights.

Mightier than the sword: “What’s clearly not very attractive is seeing everybody rush to do a 9/11 novel, or a terrorist novel. You feel that really there is a commercial desire rather than a genuine interest,” novelist Tim Parks tells The Independent’s Henry Sutton. Seven years past 9/11, “readers still display a surprising hunger for the definitive 9/11 novel,” The New York Sun’s Adam Kirsch leads, nominating “Demons” (Penguin), “Dostoyevsky’s powerful and prescient novel about terrorism,” for that honor. “Many novelists have taken it upon themselves to articulate the feelings of the West about the terrorist attacks of 9/11,” Jonathan Ruppin similarly surveys for The Guardian. “Lost Boys” (Little, Brown), James Miller’s “unusual first novel draws on two powerful modern fears: terrorism and child abduction,” The Daily Telegraph’s Sameer Rahim reviews. Random House’s spiking of a bodice-ripper about the prophet Muhammad’s wives “shows how quickly fear stunts intelligent discourse about the Muslim world,” Asra Q. Nomani comments in The Wall Street Journal.

Tragedy on our door stoop: “Residents of Darfur, Iowa reached out to the international press today, in an attempt to bring greater attention to the problems suffered by the rural Midwestern town,” The Onionreports. “While Darfur locals readily empathize with the atrocities occurring in the identically named region of Sudan, many believe that short shrift has been given to the unique issues they face as a struggling farm community. ‘Sure, there aren’t any Janjaweed militiamen tearing through here, raping and murdering women and children, but have you seen the sinkholes on Main Street?’ said barber Gerald Pitkin. The Darfur community board recently organized a benefit carnival with the neighboring town of Tibet in an effort to bring more international attention to their terrible groundwater runoff situation.” See, too, on Onion Network News: “The Beijing Olympics: Are They A Trap?”