"This is what the terrorists want," said New York Gov. David Paterson Thursday. "This is the terrorists getting a yield on their investment when they attacked this country and blew up the World Trade Center, that we're now "spying on Americans, destroying our civil liberties, restricting Miranda rights and becoming a police state. This is making their day." (words in italics mine, not Paterson's.)

It's the Government's over-the-top reaction to events like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's failed Christmas Day bomb effort though mass employment of body scanners at airports and restriction of Miranda rights,and its use of indefinite detention and military commissions instead of federal criminal trials, along with warrantless wiretapping, ramped-up camera surveillance and searches of ordinary citizens that give the terrorists their payback, not the random act of a drunk, mentally unhinged kid. It's the destruction of our Government they welcome, not attacks on individual Muslims.

New York City has a chance with the Islamic Center to take a step forward, towards tolerance and away from bigotry. Just like it does with hosting a federal criminal trial of the 9/11 defendants, which it should be welcoming instead playing the fear card and lamenting the trial's inconvenience. Instead, New York seems intent on stumbling, tripping over its own feet, and as I said, missing the forest for the trees.