First thank you for original work, that must have made you crazy and for 
your reply.

I also found that this laptop supposedly needed a firmware upgrade, but 
that didn't work either.

Meanwhile, I have disabled selinux completely and that had no effect. I 
will leave it this way until this is resolved.

Tried to rebuild esc-1.1.0-14.fc15 from the src.rpm, that failed with:
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/mockbuild/rpmbuild/BUILD/esc-
1.1.0/esc/src/lib/coolkey'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/mockbuild/rpmbuild/BUILD/esc-
1.1.0/esc/src/lib/coolkey'
cd lib/notifytray; make libs
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/mockbuild/rpmbuild/BUILD/esc-
1.1.0/esc/src/lib/notifytray'
gcc -o Linux2.6_x86_glibc_PTH_64_OPT.OBJ/notifytray.o -c -O2 -fPIC -
DLINUX1_2 -Di386 -D_XOPEN_SOURCE -DLINUX2_1 -ansi -Wall -pipe -DLINUX -
Dlinux -D_POSIX_SOURCE -D_BSD_SOURCE -DHAVE_STRERROR -DXP_UNIX -
I/usr/include/gtk-2.0 -I/usr/lib64/gtk-2.0/include -I/usr/include/atk-1.0 -
I/usr/include/cairo -I/usr/include/pango-1.0 -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -
I/usr/lib64/glib-2.0/include -I/usr/include/pixman-1 -
I/usr/include/freetype2 -I/usr/include/libpng12   -UDEBUG -DNDEBUG -
D_REENTRANT -DDLL_PREFIX=\"lib\" -DDLL_SUFFIX=\"so\" -
I../../../dist/Linux2.6_x86_glibc_PTH_64_OPT.OBJ/include  -
I../../../dist/public/traynotify -I../../../dist/private/traynotify -
I../../../dist/public/libnotify  -DHAVE_LIB_NOTIFY notifytray.c
notifytray.c: In function 'notify_icon_send_tooltip_msg':
notifytray.c:227: warning: assignment discards qualifiers from pointer 
target type
notifytray.c:242: error: too few arguments to 
function 'notify_notification_new'
make[2]: *** [Linux2.6_x86_glibc_PTH_64_OPT.OBJ/notifytray.o] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/mockbuild/rpmbuild/BUILD/esc-
1.1.0/esc/src/lib/notifytray'
make[1]: *** [libs] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/mockbuild/rpmbuild/BUILD/esc-
1.1.0/esc/src'
make: *** [libs] Error 2
error: Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.nG02bt (%build)

Removed coolkey from Firefox, installed OpenSC and still had no luck.
I did it all again with reboots in between every step, and still no good.

Under Firefox, Edit->Preferences->Encyption->Security Devices, status 
says "Not Present" with or without my cac inserted.