“Congressional turf wars and budget gridlock have put homeland security bills on the back burner even as lawmakers continue to seek testimony from the officials who implement them,” Main Justice’s Jeffrey Benzing surveys. “The DHS budget reveals certain failures in U.S. border security efforts: The Border Patrol could use more surveillance technology [and] the Coast Guard is in serious need of new vessels,” James Jay Carafano diagnoses for Sitrep. “If the homeland’s security were dependent on employee morale, we’d be in big trouble,” The Washington Post’s Joe Davidson leads.

Feds: New Justice guidelines allowing retention for up to five years of domestic intel on non-terror-tied citizens not only infringe privacy, they could endanger national security, The National Journal’s Josh Smith hears civil libertarians bewailing — as former NCTC chief Michael Leiter assures PBS NewsHour’s Margaret Warner that this comprises “only information that is lawfully collected.” After a Supreme Court ruling demanding warrants to plant GPS trackers, FBI officials still “are trying to figure out whether they need to change the way they do business,” NPR’s Carrie Johnson follows up. The early February surgical bombing of al Qaeda-linked Philippine terrorists that killed 15 people was, it turns out, covertly conducted with U.S. satellite-guided bombs, The Associated Press’ Jim Gomez reveals.

ICE, ICE Baby: “If a school resource police officer is tasked with promoting school safety, and also works for ICE, does that create a conflict of interest?” HuffPost Denver asks and answers. ICE released an illegal immigrant and alleged child rapist because he has a child who is a U.S. citizen and no prior criminal convictions, The Daily Caller’s Michael Volpe hears a lawmaker charging — while The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Levi Pulkkinen sees ICE easily IDing a suspected drug trafficker who piloted a car with “SMUGLER” emblazoned on her personalized Washington State plate. A New Jersey ICE detention center is “representative of the entire, deeply flawed system, suggesting reforms are falling short, FOX News Latino hears critics contending. “Any day now ICE will announce a second round of ‘reforms’ to the disgraced Secure Communities deportation program,” Pablo Alvarado leads for, again, HuffPost.

State and local: “The outline for the proposed National Preparedness Grant Program raises serious concerns and questions for those of us at the local level,” Philly Mayor Michael Nutter maintains in a Hill op-ed. Undercover NYPD officers attended meetings of liberal political organizations and kept intelligence files on activists, AP reports in its latest bill of particulars on the force’s counterterror campaign. The Harris County Sheriff has partnered with private security firms to train local private guards as added eyes and ears, Houston’s ABC 13 News notes. Three top execs from The Tampa P.D. and the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office are leading local law enforcement planning for the GOP Convention this August, The Tampa Bay Times profiles. Alabama lawmakers are a step closer to exempting some storm shelters from new oversight by the state agency that regulates mobile homes, The Birmingham News notes — while The Lawrence Journal-World sees a Kansas proposal to move up the date to require proof of citizenship for voter registration returning to legislative life.

Bugs ‘n bombs: As Easter looms, CBP is reminding “American travelers, importers, and consumers about a sweet but hazardous danger: Kinder brand chocolate eggs,” FOX News notes. Medics were summoned after an unnamed woman threw “white powder” (i.e., a flour bomb) on uber-meaningless-celeb Kim Kardashian at a West Hollywood hotel, but she gamely dusted herself off and carried on, the Los Angeles Times tells. The United States has helped five nations completely clear out stocks of highly enriched uranium since President Obama vowed to secure weapons-usable materials worldwide, AP reports on the eve of the Seoul nuclear security summit — while a loose-nukes expert tells Bloomberg: “There are no precise figures for how much high-enriched uranium or plutonium is missing,” and a Hill op-ed observes that “nuclear terrorism is both one of the greatest threats to national security and one of the most preventable.”

Close air support: Authorities are investigating surveillance footage showing police officers dragging a man face-down out of Oklahoma City’s airport, ABC News notes. A Montanan is jailed without bail after trying to carry four firearms past Sacramento International screeners, the Bee buzzes — while FOX News Latino sees Miami International CBP agents finding two human fetuses in luggage arriving from Cuba. “A live bee in a plastic container, a grenade, a 9mm handgun, and a bear banger launcher are just some of the bizarre items found on travelers at Canadian airport screening checks last year,” The Calgary Herald headlines. “Are you 75 or older? Terrific. If you fly out of Chicago O’Hare, Denver International, Orlando’s MCO airport or Portland, Oregon, you get to keep your shoes on,” ABC News leads. The European Parliament looks set to reject a pact with the United States to hand over passenger name records, IDG News Service notes. Critic Bruce Schneier and former TSA chief Kip Hawley continue their 10-day debate about post-Sept. 11 airport security changes in The Economist.

Border Wars: The Jan. 15, 2013, deadline for states to comply with the Real ID Act won’t be extended again, Fierce Homeland Security hears a DHS official cautioning a congressional panel. DHS’s Janet Napolitano on Friday granted special status allowing Syrians currently in the United States to outstay current visas while their home country remains in turmoil, Agence France-Presse tells. According to DHS figures, about 11.5 million illegal immigrants were residing in the United States last year, down 100,000 from the year before, The Atlanta Journal Constitution recounts. Despite apparently good news about Arizona-Mexico border security, “one dark spot stands out: The number of people dying in the desert as they attempt to make illegal crossings remains stubbornly high,” The Washington Times adds.

Courts and rights: Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control properly designated Yassin Abdullah Kadi as a specially designated global terrorist, Courthouse News Service hears a federal judge ruling. Under a plea deal, Omar Khadar should have been transferred to his native Canada to serve the remainder of his sentence but he remains at Guantanamo thanks to bureaucratic delays, especially in Ottawa, The New York Times tells. The High Court in London reserved judgment on a bid by a suspected Basque terrorist to halt his extradition to Spain where he faces trial for alleged terror-related offenses, The Harborough Mail mentions. An Indian court has termed an act of terrorism the alleged shooting of two Indian fishermen, presumed to be pirates, by Italian marines securing a tanker vessel, The Times of India tells.

Over there: Washington has no immediate response to a Pakistani parliamentary commission’s call for the United States to end drone strikes on its territory and formally apologize for killing 24 soldiers in November, The FirstPost reports. In the wake of terrorist outrages, Turkey’s P.M. is unlikely to approve a prosecutor’s bid to interrogate the nation’s top spy in a probe into an alleged urban wing of the PKK terror group, World Bulletin relays. France’s politicking prez proposes a sweeping new law jailing those who visit extremist web sites, RT reports — while The Wall Street Journal has French officials still “piecing together how Mohamed Merah became the alleged homegrown terrorist behind the most violent attacks on French soil in almost two decades,” and GlobalPost sees a French teacher facing disciplinary action after asking students to observe a minute of silence for Merah. Investigators, meantime, have found no evidence linking the shooter to al Qaeda or any other terrorist outfit, AP adds.

Qaeda Qorner: The West sees foreign aid to Yemen as a way to counter al Qaeda, but Yemenis, pointing to Afghanistan, caution against too much, too soon, The Christian Science Monitor spotlights — while The Hill hears the U.S. Navy denying any role in last week’s naval bombardment of suspected al Qaeda hideouts in southern Yemen. Interrogations of an al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah leader suggest he was in Pakistan to re-invigorate ties between South and Southeast Asian terror groups, Asia Times tells. At least 17 members of al Qaeda and fighters from a Salafist group have escaped from a jail in Iraq’s Kirkuk, BBC News notes. Boko Haram and al Qaeda have almost nothing to do with each other, but the Nigerian government welcomes a perceived link to diminish responsibility for what is really a domestic issue, Fierce Homeland Security quotes a visiting expert. North Africa’s al Qaeda franchise claims to have kidnapped a German man, demanding release of a Muslim woman imprisoned in Germany, Reuters reports.

Close encounters of the fourth kind: “Frustrated by ‘the astonishing incapacity of earthlings to halt the rampant slaughter of their own kind’ in Syria, the emperor of Zarklom 12 announced Wednesday he had no choice but to dispatch his own intergalactic forces from 3 million light years away to end the senseless bloodshed,” The Onion reports. ‘From his floating palace within his gaseous planet’s swirling clouds of blue-green ammonia, Supreme Emperor and Dynastic Overlord Thuu’l told reporters that while the human race appeared willing to sit idly by, the planet of Zarklom 12 could no longer turn a blind eye to the mounting casualties in the yearlong uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. ‘We have monitored the ongoing violence in the region of your world known as Syria, and we find ourselves as disgusted by your reluctance to stop it as we are horrified by the deaths themselves,’ said Thuu’l, an oily, amoeba-like creature who held in his pseudopod a U.N. report indicating al-Assad’s forces have killed more than 7,500 civilians. ‘It’s unbearable to watch even from the far end of the Triangulum Galaxy, and yet you who dwell upon the same planet continue to tolerate it. How is that possible?’”