The tow-headed, oafish Boris Johnson-- member of Parliament, erstwhile editor of the Spectator, and columnist for the Daily Telegraph--is of a type that we don't have in America but which is very common in Britain: the legislator-cum-journalist. Johnson is notorious there for his role in the "Sextator" scandal of 2004 in which, simultaneously, Johnson (married with young children) was caught sleeping with one of the magazine's contributors, the blind Home Secretary was bedding the magazine's American publisher, and another married writer impregnated the magazine's 23-year old receptionist, in a situation that made "Noises Off!" look like "Hedda Gabler." Anyway, Johnson's most recent piece in the Spectator riled me. Ruminating on the Blair legacy, Johnson writes:

And why are there so many middle-class, fish-and-chip-eating, cricket-playing British Muslims who seem to want to murder their fellow Britons, 10 years into the Blair premiership? Yes, I am afraid it is his fault, and it is time we all admitted that the latent poison of Muslim alienation and disaffection has been potentiated by the war in Iraq.

Blair's fault? Violence against an unjust regime (say, as a tactic utilized by dissidents in apartheid South Africa or present-day Iran) is one thing, but reasonable people ought to concur that those living in a liberal democracy (Britain being an exemplar) are not justified in thinking it's okay to blow themselves up on subways because they happen to disagree with particular aspects of their country's foreign policy. Yet when Muslims are aggrieved (and a shockingly high number of British Muslims believe the 7/7 attacks were justified) apparently all bets are off. You'd expect these apologetics from George Galloway, Ken Livingstone, and other assorted characters on the British far-left, but not a mainstream Tory and usually sensible man like Johnson. --James Kirchick P.S.: BoJo has a shock of blond hair, not a toe for a head. He's tow-headed, my mistake.