A reader (and NR cruise alum) e-mails: 

We were planning to take our three-year-old daughter to the Christmas tree lighting in downtown Portland. We got delayed and didn’t go…

Needless to say, we are shocked and furious about this… When you read the accounts that this monster was advised he would be killing thousands of women and children but answered that he hoped more would die, your sense of outrage really boils over. This wasn’t a criminal act; it was a terrorist attack on Americans who were exercising their freedom of religion to celebrate the beginning of the Christian holiday season (regardless of how secular tree-lighting ceremonies are in practice). 

We are fortunate to have an FBI that was competent in this case, this time. We have a neighbor who was at the lighting and who today dismissed the significance of this incident, saying, “So, he never really had a bomb. The FBI got him to do it.” Sure, the FBI framed him. Or maybe this Somali did it as revenge for Black Hawk Down. Or maybe it is because I have a banana in my freezer. Enough with the excuses, already. How many Americans must die before we as a people take seriously this Islamic terrorist threat? 

Thousands too many, I fear.

Andy McCarthy is right.