ILLINOIS TEA PARTY

“Smuggling of potential terrorists across the border is evolving into a billion-dollar industry for Mexican drug cartels while posing a significant threat to the United States,” The Washington Examiner’s Sara A. Carter is told by federal law enforcers. “Tobacco taxes create a perfect arbitrage opportunity that radical Muslims exploit to collect money for terrorist groups that murder Americans and our allies,” Scripps Howard News Service’s Deroy Murdock maintains.

Feds: “Did you know the U.S. government is sharing its secrets?” James Jay Carafano leads in a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed alleging that U.S. officials “voluntarily reveal highly sensitive intelligence about our counterterrorism programs.” The House defense authorization bill earmarks $143.8 million for development of “unconventional, creative and multidisciplinary” approaches to counterterrorism, The Washington Post’s Walter Pincus spotlights. Some CIA officers involved in counterterror drone strikes privately argue that the effort aids al Qaeda recruitment, The Inter Press Service’s Gareth Porter reports.

Homies: Mexico is demanding an investigation into the apparent shooting death of a teenager by a Border Patroller, “an incident bound to stoke cross-border tensions over illegal immigration,” Reuters’ Julian Cardona recounts — while The Washington Post’s William Booth sees U.S. officials scrambling to probe the second killing of a Mexican by a U.S. agent in two weeks. DHS’s Janet Napolitano has granted a renewable two-year deferment to Kurdish restaurateur Ibrahim Parlak, who has long fought deportation for an undisclosed arrest in Turkey on a separatism charge, The South Bend (Ind.) Tribune’s Lou Mumford relates. DHS’s USCIS proposes to increase fees to apply for or renew more than two dozen citizenship documents, The Texas Tribune’s Julian Aguilar announces.

State and local: The NYPD undercover agent — an Egypt-born Muslim — who nailed two would-be terror recruits last weekend “is a product of a campaign by the nation’s largest police department to fight terrorism since 9/11,” The Associated Press profiles. “With U.S. citizens being increasingly recruited to commit acts of terrorism, law enforcement leaders and experts say local police must be the first line of defense,” The Newark Star-Ledger, relatedly leads. The Indiana DHS wants everyone to purchase an all-hazards radio, Terre Haute’s WTHI 10 News notes. An Oregon county is passing out Food Defense Toolkits to eateries in hopes of forestalling restaurant-focused bioterror attacks, such as Rajneesh cultists’ 1984 sprinkling of salmonella on restaurant salad bars, The Oregonian reports.

Bugs ‘n bombs: U.S. military chemists have developed Decon Green, a family of non-toxic products designed to decontaminate surfaces affected by nerve gas, mustard gas, radioactive isotopes and anthrax, Homeland Security Newswire relays. The CDC classifies Q fever as a Category B bioterror agent “because it is moderately easy to disseminate, causes moderate morbidity and/or mortality and requires enhanced testing and surveillance capacity,” GateHouse News Service explains — and see SmartPlanet on the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service. The United States must do more to stop the flow of assault weapons across the Mexican border, Security Management quotes border experts — while AP has ATF agents popping a Canadian gun dealer who kept a stash of sniper rifles and ammo in a Washington state storage unit.

Ivory (Watch) Towers: High school officials contacted New Jersey’s Office of Homeland Security several times in 2006 when newly arrested terror suspect Mohamed Mahmood Alessa’s anti-American rhetoric became alarming, The Bergen County Record relates. Polk State College’s new Agri Business/Technology Institute focuses on homeland security agricultural safety and water management, The Tampa Bay Business Journal relates. A public community college in California has set up a scholarship fund for immigrant students — including illegal immigrants, FOX News notes — as Berkeleyside sees DHS awarding $3 million “in Pre-Disaster Mitigation funds to UC-Berkeley for structural retrofits to the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union.” Arabic language schools in Yemen complain that a terror-related security crackdown is damaging their prospects, Sky News notes.

Close air support: In yet another airport checkpoint diva drama, Hole vocalist/disaster zone Courtney Love “put on quite a show” at an LAX security station, Gossipcenter.com blabs. The FBI is exploring federal charges against a Bay State man who allegedly pointed a laser light at a state police helicopter, The North Andover Eagle Tribune tells.“The airport is becoming the place where terrorists begin their trips to prison,” The New York Post takes note. “Security lines are rarely the slow-moving nightmares that were common only a couple of years ago,” a Chicago Tribune piece on rising passenger satisfaction says. “The British government is currently launching a new screening regime modeled on [TSA’s] SPOT. There’s just one problem with all this: there’s no evidence that SPOT is actually effective,” an Economist take on behavior detection explains.

Coming and going: Singapore has launched a global manhunt for a Brit suspected in a train vandalism case that raises doubts about the security of the city state’s key infrastructure, Agence France-Presse reports. “Bangkok is slowly recovering from the worst political violence in two decades, but security on mass transit systems remains on high alert,” The Bangkok Post updates. Shoppers from Mexico contribute $2.4 billion to Arizona’s retail economy each year, Tucson’s KOLD 13 News notes in a report on the tradeoff between border and financial security — while CBP officials tell The San Diego Union-Tribune that a suspected smuggling tunnel discovered last week near the San Ysidro border crossing hadn’t yet been pressed into service.

Courts and rights: A Pakistani arrested in Massachusetts in connection with the Times Square bombing case made his first appearance in a Manhattan courtroom yesterday, The Boston Globe reports — as WNWO NBC24 sees a Toledo couple arrested last Thursday pleading not guilty to charges of conspiring to fund terrorists overseas. A court in Rotterdam has ruled that conditions in a Washington D.C. prison are unacceptable for a terror-convicted Dutch national, Radio Netherlands notes. An inaugurator of the Minuteman border watch movement is accused by his estranged wife of threatening to kill their family and any police who try to protect them, The Arizona Republic relays.“The Miranda issue symbolizes President Obama’s restoration of the terrorism-as-crime paradigm that prevailed before the 2001 attacks,” Bush-era legalista John Yoo assails in The Wall Street Journal.

Over there: The judge who heads Britain’s top court defends recent rulings that terror suspects cannot be sent home to their own countries, The Times of London tells. An anonymous “how to” manual of terror techniques is circulating among Germany’s far left, much to the consternation of authorities, Der Spiegel relates. As a $50 million lawsuit’s dismissal is affirmed, a Sudanese leader tells Voice of America the United States should still pay compensation for the 1998 bombing of a pharmaceutical plant believed linked to al Qaeda. “Recent arrests in New York, Texas, and Yemen could support the trend of Americans heading abroad for terrorism training. But do the United States and Yemen have conflicting security interests?” The Christian Science Monitor surveys.

Over here: Recordings by U.S.-born imam Anwar al-Awlaki, considered by some the new Osama bin Laden, are being sold in a Muslim supermarket in Northern Virginia, CBN News notes. Two would-be terror recruits arrested last weekend are the latest local terror suspects obsessed with Awlaki, who is high on “the feds’ hit list,” the N.Y. Post notes. “Setting aside your natural fears that America is suddenly crawling with any number of Islamic sleepers, here’s five things you should know about al Shabaab,” Esquire leads in re: “the next al Qaeda.” The Obama administration seems to reserve the use of the word “terrorism” exclusively for violent acts that are carried out by Muslims, an Alternet contributor complains — as a Los Angeles Times editorial says “the administration has been excessively delicate” in avoiding “Islamist terrorism” and other such terms. “Will a mosque at Ground Zero make reconciliation more likely? Or will it needlessly rub salt in the unhealed wounds of 9/11?” a Boston Globe columnist queries.

Holy Wars: “Al Qaeda’s remaining hopes of launching massive, complicated terror attacks may have gone up in smoke” with the CIA-drone-effected assassination of Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, a founding terrorist, WTOP 103.5 FM spotlights. “The corollary of liberalism is Islam, which in my opinion is a totalitarian religious cult masquerading as a hegemonic political philosophy. Because of their fascist tendencies, liberalism and Islam are two sides of the same coin,” a WorldNetDaily columnist contends. Human rights and respect for Islam and religious differences should play a vital role in efforts to combat terrorism, Reuters hears the E.U. and United States jointly declaring last week. Rehab centers in Indonesia will help convicted terrorists set up businesses, send their children to government schools and get religious counseling from moderate mullahs, The Daily Telegraph frowns. The number of al Qaeda women seems to be increasing on the battlefields and behind the scenes where they provide logistical support, London’s Asharq Alawsat leads.

Nuclear option: “After multiple failures in its attempts to plug its out-of-control deep sea oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, British Petroleum has announced that it has begun a new phase in oil exploration — exploring what might happen if you set off a nuclear device over a spewing oil well 5,000 feet below the surface of a body of water filled with crude oil,” Unconfirmed Sources confirms. “The statement, issued by BP’s military arm, is significant on two fronts: It marks the first time that the venerable oil giant has admitted it possesses its own nuclear arsenal; and second, it finally explains exactly what those ‘Beyond Petroleum’ commercials were actually referring to. BP, which has always prided itself on cutting edge technology in the pursuit of raking in billions, at least until they got their cutting edge stuck in the well pipe, issued a list of pros and cons regarding the use of thermonuclear well-capping science, which it dubs ‘Operation Devastation Desperation.’ In this case, the devastation refers to BP’s stock value, which has recently plunged far deeper than the leaking well.”