No Surprises Here

Raise your hand if, when you first heard about the abortive car bombing in London, or the follow-up attack near Glasgow, you immediately assumed the attackers were IRA terrorists.

Anyone? Me, neither. None of us thinks that way any more.

Which is strange, because just a few short years ago every bomb that went off in the UK had an Irishman’s fingerprints on it.

Not any more.

Nor are we the least bit surprised at reports that the attacks were almost certainly conducted by Al Qaeda in Great Britain. (“Britain Arrests Two More in Car Bomb Plot”).

We may not know which particular Islamist group is behind a given attack like these in the UK, or in Baghdad, Beirut, Turkey, Indonesia, Somalia, Thailand, Israel, or any of the other dozens of places identified in the 24/7 crawl on whatever news channel you watch. But we know that angry Muslims are behind them. We don’t even think about it any more.

Now raise your hand if you think increased scrutiny of Islamic organizations in the United States is unreasonable.

I say unreasonable, because reasonableness is the limit beyond which searches and seizures must not go under the Fourth Amendment. But if they are reasonable, they are Constitutional, or at least constitutionally defensible.

Or are we still forbidden to connect the dots?