Free Republic

No one died and the plot never got off the ground, thank goodness, but America yesterday got another chilling reminder of the threat from the homegrown enemies next door. Federal agents busted a group of al Qaeda wannabes with dreams of destroying the Sears Tower in Chicago and several federal buildings in Miami. Much of law enforcement's success surely is due to the kinds of warrantless-surveillance programs loudly decried by Democrats and the civil-liberties crowd - including the financial-transactions monitoring that was disclosed Thursday. But this latest plot offers a troubling glimpse of a homegrown fifth-column group on U.S. soil...

MIAMI (Reuters) - Seven people arrested in Miami planned attacks on the landmark Sears Tower in Chicago and other buildings as part of a pledge to al Qaeda to wage war against the United States, U.S. prosecutors said on Friday. An indictment handed down against the men by a grand jury in south Florida said they sought to gain support from Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda in order to destroy FBI buildings in the United States. At least one of them also plotted to blow up the 110-story Sears Tower in Chicago, it said. The men, named as Narseal Batiste,...