West Texas law enforcers are on guard following a DHS alert warning of possible killings in retaliation for a recent crackdown on the Barrio Azteca gang, FOX News’ Joshua Rhett Miller reports — as Homeland Security Newswire judges: “The steady deterioration of security conditions in Mexico has brought the country to the verge of resembling Colombia in the 1990s.” Hard hit by budget cuts, the NYPD has decided to fight spiking crime rates by reassigning counterterror cops to street patrols in tough neighborhoods, The New York Post’s Larry Celona relates — which development CBS 2 News’ Marcia Kramer terms an “anti-terror shocker.”
Feds: A San Francisco man arrested yesterday for threatening House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was upset over health care legislation, the FBI tells Bloomberg’s Karen Gullo and Justin Blum. “Every year, thousands of people find themselves caught up in the government’s terrorist screening process [and] their numbers are likely to rise,” The New York Times’ Mike McIntire spotlights. As to its counterterrorist judicial framework, the Obama administration’s stylistic differences from its predecessor’s tack “mask a sameness in substance that should worry civil libertarians,” Reason’s Eli Lake assesses. Facing questions about the legality of its drone attacks in Pakistan’s Afghan-borderlands, team Obama “is pushing back with a legal defense of a program it only tacitly acknowledges,” The Wall Street Journal’s Keith Johnson surveys.
State and local: Tight security measures will affect car, foot and Metro bus and rail travel in D.C. during next week’s nuclear security summit, the Post’s Martin Weil alerts — as Greater Greater Washington queries: “Do Washington’s unique security fears limit the Bill of Rights for its citizens?” Legislation requiring text books used in Oklahoma public school to include info about the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing has been signed into law. The Tulsa World tells. “If the United States government collapses, Michael Craft and his Unorganized Militia of Champaign County are ready,” The Dayton (Ohio) Daily News profiles. In a dramatic turnaround from 16 years ago, Californians now overwhelmingly favor giving illegal immigrants a “path to legalization,” The San Jose Mercury News finds a new poll showing — while The Arizona Daily Sun has Gov. Jan Brewer asking for more federal resources along the Mexico border.
Ivory (Watch) Towers: A Drexel University project is leading to a camera that could detect gases emitted during the manufacture of biological and chemical terror agents, The Philadelphia Inquirer informs. Beijing has given the task of creating an escape plan for tourists at Tiananmen Square in the event of a bioterror event to the No. 2 prof at Peking University’s department of atmospheric sciences, The South China Morning Post reports. A device devised by Duke University researchers to help first responders tackle the pandemonium following a dirty bomb attack quickly IDs who needs to be treated for radiation poisoning, The Raleigh News & Observer notes.
Bugs ‘n bombs: “For the first time, preventing . . . nuclear terrorism is now at the top of America’s nuclear agenda,” The Associated Press quotes President Obama announcing his plans for the U.S. nuke arsenal. “When the enemy’s best recent shot involves lighting his pants on fire, we shouldn’t torture ourselves with nightmarish visions of weapons of mass destruction,” a Washington Examiner columnist cracks — as Mother Jones questions if Obama’s stance is pushing Iran toward nuclear armaments. “There is no doubt that suicide attacks can be deadly — and terrifying. But are they effective in furthering the larger goals of the attackers?” a Los Angeles Times op-ed ponders. “No country in the world is more dependent on its computers than the United States . . . That means the United States is uniquely vulnerable to sophisticated computer hackers,” NPR notes.
Close air support: The FBI and F-16s responded to Denver International after a passenger was acting oddly on a United Airlines flight from Washington, 9News notes — and see AP as to whether a Qatari diplomat really tried to set fire to his shoes.Techies who swooped on Apple’s new iPad are thrilled to discover that TSA apparently won’t make them pull the devices out of their bags at checkpoints, Forbes finds out. Muslim and Sikh groups praised TSA for rolling back screening rules on passengers arriving from 14 primarily Islamic countries, even as some worry that profiling will continue, The Religious News Service notes. Liverpool airport security arrested two German women trying to wheel an already deceased family member onto an easyJet flight to Berlin, which Jaunted deems “a first.”
Coming and going: “In a world beset by the possibilities of terrorism, for flights that are anything less than trans-Atlantic many travelers will do anything they can to avoid airports,” a San Gabriel Valley (Calif.) Tribune editorial on high-speed rail observes. Travel insurance “doesn’t cover you if you are concerned about terrorist bombings on the plane, train, or bus” and, if it does “it may be limited to the exact city of your itinerary and to a specific time frame,” Gather tutors. Since 1995 there have been 250 attacks on passenger rail systems worldwide, resulting in 900 deaths and more than 6,000 injuries, Government Executive spotlights — and check LiveScience.com’s “What Were the Worst Subway Attacks in History.” Cutting Edge News, finally, complains that DHS’s February quadrennial review “mentioned subways only once in more than 100 pages.”
Crime and punishment: The second woman in the “Jihad Jane” case yesterday shook her head to indicate a not guilty plea, rather than speak at a brief Philadelphia court hearing, The Inquirer informs. A Texas man who tried to firebomb a Pasadena condominium development was sentenced this week to five years in a federal slammer, the Los Angeles Times relays. Some prisoners held in the Bureau of Prison’s harsh “Communications Management Units” protest being designated as “terrorists” by Justice, despite never having been convicted of any terror-related crime, Inter Press Service says — while Politico sees the administration releasing new rules for maximum-security detention of terror convicts identical to those its predecessor proposed in 2006 and then abandoned.
Over there: Somali “teachers say recruit-hungry insurgent units have decimated their classrooms as they entice youth to join their “jihad” holy war, The Media Line spotlights — while The Washington Post reports that Somalia’s U.S.-backed government and its Kenyan allies have recruited hundreds of Somali refugees, including children, to fight in a war against al-Shabaab. Monday’s multi-prong suicide attack on the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar “was a reminder that no place is safe and no one is beyond the terrorists’ deadly reach,” Lahore’s Daily Times editorializes. The bodies of nine of the 10 Pakistani gunmen from the 2008 attack on Mumbai were buried in a secret location in January, Reuters is told.
Over here: Six years after State barred Tariq Ramadan from entering the United States, the Muslim scholar will speak in Chicago on Saturday, as “his opponents warn of danger ahead,” The Chicago Tribune curtain-raises — while The Orange County Weekly hears “self-described liberty lovers” warning local Muslims “to be on guard” when Ramadan speaks near Disneyland in May. Following the metro blasts in Moscow, women from the Caucasus “worry about the return of the arbitrary arrests, xenophobic attacks and open hostility that many experienced after similar terrorist attacks in the past,” The New York Times spotlights. “While the challenge of terrorism cries for long-term, consistent strategy, Russia’s system of heavy-handed and unaccountable governance precludes strategic thinking,” Masha Lipman maintains in the Post.
Holy Wars: Muslims aren’t alone in seeing a double standard in how terrorism is linked to Islam but not often to Christianity or other religions, RNS, again, explores — as Al Jazeera finds CAIR asking the FBI for intel on militia groups’ threat to American Muslims. When leading Islamic scholars convened in Turkey last weekend to debate the 14th-century text undergirding today’s jihadism, top religious leaders were notably absent, while “many locals viewed the conference with suspicion before it even began,” Hurriyet reports. Forty pages of captured Web chat offer a rare glimpse into the inner workings of Southeast Asia’s Jemaah Islamiyah al Qaeda affiliate, suggesting more international links than previously assumed, AP reports. “Inspired by 18th century American revolutionists, today’s Tea Partiers have gotten the nation’s attention. Can they foment their own revolution?” AP explores, answering: “Not yet.”
Blood libel: “Boston’s Liberty Tree, the towering elm that stands on the very spot where the original provided shade and a meeting place for patriots in the lead-up to the American Revolution, has been in very poor health of late,” Ridiculopathy laboriously parodies. “The symptoms are plain to see: withered roots, drooping limbs, and even an embarrassing case of bark rot. According to a spokesperson from the National Parks Service, the tree has been poisoned with what appears to be medical waste. Someone, it seems, has been feeding it blood on a regular basis. Earlier this week an anonymous tipster phoned officials to say that . . . he or she had been strongly encouraged to do it after listening to a recent local talk radio show. Here’s the weird part: This was not a call-in gardening program meant to answer people’s questions about this sort of thing. It was a political show dedicated to anti-government rants of one sort and another. What the host was doing offering any tree-related advice, especially advice this far off base, is anyone’s guess.”
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