By David C. Morrison, Special to Congressional Quarterly

In what was dubbed “Operation Darkening Clouds,” Justice secretly gathered personal data on more than 130,000 immigrants in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, The Associated Press’ Tom Hays finds a civil liberties lawsuit alleging. Increasingly, U.S. citizens and legal residents who work alongside illegal immigrants are being detained and interrogated during ICE raids — and some are filing claims against DHS, USA Today’s Emily Bazar spotlights.

Feds: Justice has rapped ex-DHS chief Tom Ridge’s failure to register for two years a nearly half-million-dollar lobbying contract he held with the government of Albania, ABC News’ Jake Tapper has Roll Call reporting. The House-passed eavesdropping bill made it over a crucial Senate hurdle yesterday, Reuters’ Thomas Ferraro relates — while USA Today’s Michael Winter predicts its final passage today. House homeland appropriations chief David Price, D-N.C., “does not think we’re safer than we were Sept. 10, 2001,” The Chapel Hill News learns from what was billed as a “major speech” — while The Raleigh News & Observer’s Barbara Barrett has the Price-shepherded DHS spending bill seeking to focus ICE more on alien felons and less on undocumented workers. Low morale among TSA officers may be compromising security and leading screeners to quit their jobs, USA Today’s Thomas Frank cites from a controversial DHS Report.

McBama: Americans see Barack Obama as better able than John McCain to handle energy issues and the economy, and roughly tying him on five other issues, Gallup’s Frank Newport notes, adding: “McCain’s only advantage is on terrorism.” But, the CIA’s ex-Osama bin Laden hunter complains to The Grand Rapids Press’ Ken Kolker, “neither candidate appears ready to change flawed foreign relations policies that have mired the United States in the war against terror.” If you believe the cybersphere, Capitol Hill Blue’s Hall Brown scathes:“Obama’s a Muslim, McCain will keep us safer from terrorism, and there are ghosts in Middleboro Town Hall.”

Poly-ticks: The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza monitors “a discussion among the chattering class about the potential political peril for Obama if the situation in Iraq improves significantly over the coming months.” There’s no question “that President Bush cares more about winning in Afghanistan and Iraq than he does about his legacy,” Greg Reeson avows on Gather. The contentious debate over rewriting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act may be over in the House, but it’s just starting to gain ground on the campaign trail, The Hill’s Walter Alarkon forecasts. “Counterterrorism for Democrats revolves around rescuing jihadists from the Bush administration,” Lee Culpepper accuses on Townhall.com.

State and local: California has suspended its Adopt-A-Highway program after the Minutemen group sued for discrimination upon being forced to move its stretch of highway farther from a Border Patrol checkpoint, the Los Angeles Times tells. FEMA officials stand by their intention to stop supplying ice to disaster victims, despite being called “buttheads” by Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., The Jackson Clarion-Ledger relates. If disaster befalls, tourists and residents evacuating from North Carolina’s Outer Banks may be turned away from Hampton Roads, The Norfolk Virginian-Pilotreports — while The New Orleans Times-Picayune has securicrats sweating a potential evacuation of the burgeoning Hispanic population that has helped rebuild the city.

Ivory (Watch) Towers: A GOP solon wants State to screen three Palestinian recipients of Fulbright grants for terror links, The New York Sun says. “We have not been reassured that our students won’t face penalties down the road with TSA,” a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute official says in re: foreign students DHS labeled “security threats,” The Washington Times tells. The University of Texas System has filed a motion renewing the legal battle over CBP plans to run a border fence through its Brownsville campus, The Daily Texan tells. A county official in Virginia asks State to decide whether a controversial Saudi-funded Islamic school should remain open, NBC 4 News notes. At this summer’s Beijing Olympics, more than 7,300 trained and tested college students “will participate in the security checks at the entrance of each venue,” Xinhua says — along with a battery of surface-to-air missiles, Reuters adds.

Bugs ‘n bombs: Las Vegas’ homeland security shop was notified after a dead dog tested positive for anthrax, KLAS 8 News notes. A classified U.S. assessment suggests climate change could contribute to “political instability around the world, the collapse of governments and the creation of terrorist safe havens,” Danger Room relays. If Internet-connected household devices are not properly secured, they give hackers easy access to a home or office network, Sky News notes, fingering the Jura 19 coffee maker.The most worrisome factor in a recent proliferation study “lies in the sudden awakening of several Middle Eastern countries that, now sensing a threat from Iran, feel the urge to jump onto the nuclear bandwagon,” a Washington Times columnist contends.

Coming and going: Following Saturday’s advent of new boarding rules, a driver’s-licenseless passenger tells The Consumerist, “he had to answer questions about his political party affiliation and previous addresses.”Coins left behind by passengers at LAX screening stations amount to $30,000 annually; nationwide, more than $1 million has piled up since 2005, Los Angeles’s KNBC 4 News notes. Travelers who have their computers seized by CBP face real headaches, while the security value of confiscations is unclear, U.S. News and World Report spotlights. Terrorists could use private jets and light aircraft to launch attacks on crowds and buildings in Britain, The Daily Telegraph finds the government’s anti-terror maven warning. “Major choke points at our ports and on our highways and rail lines that move goods to and from ports pose a significant threat to security and trade,” Barry McCaffrey warns in The Seattle Times.

Courts and rights: Three Trinidadians accused last year of a plot to bomb JFK airport pleaded not guilty yesterday after being extradited to the United States, Reuters reports. An appeals court has upheld the conviction of a man who lied to a federal grand jury about training with a Pakistani militant group, AP relates. Guantanamo’s new commander, who was at the Pentagon on 9/11, “won’t be meeting with his prisoners — who include the attack’s confessed mastermind,” AP also reports. A bipartisan group of some 200 ex-officials and religious leaders called yesterday for a presidential order outlawing some Bush administration interrogation and detention practices, The Baltimore Sun says. A Somalian Gitmo detainee plans to file a habeas corpus petition in a U.S. federal court in Washington today, the Post recounts.

Over there: There is little or no proof that the nearly $6 billion the United States has given Pakistan since 9/11, has been used to combat terrorism, AP has a GAO audit finding. Iran’s Parliamentary speaker says the West may face “a done deal” if it provokes Iran, hinting that Tehran could build nuclear weapons if attacked, Ynetnewsnotes. The U.K. will keep its highest terrorism alert in place for the United Arab Emirates for at least a month from June 14, Bloomberg reports. Majorities in 14 countries favor a total ban on torture, but in four others they find the practice acceptable when dealing with terrorists, Agence France-Presse cites a U.N.-contracted poll.

Over here: A Jewish judge in Michigan has rejected a Lebanese-born defendant’s request that he recuse himself from a terror case, The Detroit News notes. A league of 57 Muslim nations warns that a Danish court’s rejection of a suit against a paper for printing Mohammad cartoons could provoke “Islamophobia,” Reuters reports. Prez candidates “should distinguish sharply between mainstream Muslims, who cherish America’s civil liberties, and Islamists, who use American freedom to advance a radical political and cultural agenda,” Zainab Al-Suwaij comments in The Boston Globe. A counter-radicalization plan is being developed in Scotland to prevent young Muslims being “brainwashed by al Qaeda terrorists,” The Scotsman says — while The Daily Telegraphhas a “disturbing” police report saying “extremists are winning the battle for the hearts and minds of Britain’s young Muslims.”

Holy Wars: President Bush “denounces ‘Islamo-facism,’ while Muslims suspect the Pope wants to convert them, a threat they never have had to confront in Islam’s 1,500-year history,” an Asia Times columnist comments. (“What kind of war of ideas will fit the terrorist threat today?” a Wall Street Journal op-ed asks.) A Policy Review writer asserts “the capacity of Islam to be integrated into a liberal constitutional regime, where the religious precepts of Islam might be generalized within a larger civil religion.” Algeria is embarked on what “appears to be the most ambitious attempt in the region to change a school system to make its students less vulnerable to religious extremism, The New York Times surveys — even as Agence France-Presse has some 1,000 police officers being mobilized in Algiers to keep its tourist beaches safe from Islamist attack. “A trip to Indonesia — home to more than 200 million Muslims — reveals a faith that hardly resembles the one Americans have come to know in the blood-soaked years since 9/11,” a USA Today contributor comments.

P.S.: Unspeakable horror: “According to a Pentagon report, love letters written by U.S. troops have nearly tripled in their use of disturbing language, graphic imagery, and horrific themes since the start of the war,” The Onion reveals. “The report, which studied 600 romantic notes sent over a period of two years, found a significant increase in terrifying descriptions of violence and gore, while references to beautiful flowers, singing bluebirds, and the infinite, undulating sea were seen to decrease by 93 percent. According to detailed analysis of the letters, the longer a U.S. soldier had been stationed in Iraq the more macabre the overall tone of his correspondence became. Troops who had been fighting for less than a year lapsed into frightening allegory only 15 percent of the time, while those who had been serving between two and three years described their affection for loved ones back home as more vibrant and alive than any of the children in the village of Basra. Troops stationed in Iraq for four years or longer composed their letters entirely in blood.”