Hypocrisy is on show in a Manhattan courtroom today. The New York Civil Liberties Union will argue for the second day before Judge Richard Berman that the city’s subway bag search policy is an “unjustifiable erosion of the privacy rights of the American public.” Yet take a walk into the NYCLU’s Manhattan headquarters – which it shares with other organizations – and you’ll find a sign warning visitors that all bags are subject to search. One of the city’s lawyers, Jay Kranis, pointed this out yesterday in court while cross-examining a witness. Either the NYCLU believes its headquarters are at greater risk of a terrorist threat than the city’s subway system, or it believes ordinary New Yorkers don’t deserve the same safety precautions that they do.

As we wrote back in July – when the police first announced random searches – the supposed civil liberties champions would do well to spend less time shouting through megaphones and more time reading the Fourth Amendment of which they’ve proclaimed themselves the defenders. The only searches it forbids are “unreasonable searches.” The July attacks on London’s transit system put New York’s on higher alert, and Commissioner Kelly – about whom we wrote that we doubt he “has ever done anything unreasonable in his entire career” – decided the searches were necessary.

The deputy commissioner of intelligence for the city’s police, David Cohen, was in court yesterday to explain how random searches serve as a deterrent. Mr. Cohen told the court that the search work because “unpredictability is the enemy of the terrorists.” As for the NYCLU, that it is preaching one thing and practicing another just about sums it up.