JOHN SOLOMON As the British terror plot was unfolding, the Bush administration quietly tried to take away $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new explosives detection technology. Homeland Security's research arm, called the Sciences & Technology Directorate, is a "rudderless ship without a clear way to get back on course," Republican and Democratic senators on the Appropriations Committee declared recently. The administration also was slow to start testing a new liquid explosives detector that the Japanese government provided to the United States earlier this year. The department failed to spend $200 million in research and...