The ACLU thinks cops are a bigger threat than terrorists.

Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote in OpinionJournal "Blood must flow. There must be widows, there must be orphans."--jihadist Fayiz Azzam addressing a gathering in Atlanta, 1990

"We conquer the land of the infidels, and we spread Islam by calling the infidels to Allah."--from a speech by Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, outlining the plan for Islamic world rule, at an event sponsored by the Islamic Charity Project International, Detroit, 1991

"He is now extremely anxious when he sees police officers in the subway system."--from a description, by the New York Civil Liberties Union, of one of the complainants who joined its lawsuit against the New York City Police Department, August 2005

Then tell him to take a cab.

A solemn handful of plaintiffs surrounded New York Civil Liberties Union head Donna Lieberman last week as she announced the agency's latest lawsuit--this one targeted at new procedures allowing for the random inspection of bags carried onto the subways. This will not come as a surprise--the agency has had an exceptionally busy few years, since 9/11, campaigning against expanding police powers, increased surveillance and other antiterror measures, all of which, the NYCLU and likeminded watchdogs regularly inform us, pose a greater danger than any that might come from the terrorists themselves. How Americans of normal intelligence respond to this reasoning should make entertaining reading someday.

Most of those entering the subways these days are, it seems, unperturbed by the prospect of a bag check, and not a few have made clear their approval of such precautions. Indeed, in its latest war on the security search, the NYCLU has entered on decidedly iffy terrain: one close to home, psychologically, for masses of Americans (and not just those who take city trains and buses), all in a good position to weigh the sort of argument which holds that government security methods are a greater threat to them than terrorism.

And as I understand it, if someone does not want their bag checked, it won't be checked. They just can't board the subway.

It was a war undertaken even as the pictures of the London bombings remain fresh in memory--along, of course, with those of the devoted jihadists, shown (via surveillance cameras) sprinting through that city's transportation system after their attempt at a second strike. Who can forget the faces of this crew, as it rushed furtively about through empty corridors and train cars--a sight that lent a special touch of nightmare immediacy to the picture unfolding in Britain these last weeks. The pictures revealed, as none had before, the scope of the Islamic terrorist apparatus and support groups operating from within--a threat not limited to Britain.