Update: Juan Cole has an update — on this odd, religious cult, not Muslim at all.

The morning TV shows are just bursting with the news of 7 men in Florida being arrested for a terror plot to bomb the Sears Tower in Chicago. Atty G. Gonzales is speaking seriously. FBI agent Alex Acosta is describing the warehouse they hung out in. Dicky Cheny is in Chicago at the Mercantile Exchange, apparently unrelated, but the stations keep cutting to him –“He might say something about it!!!”

Paint me bemused. It sure looks like protein-less food stuff to me. No doubt there are folks wanting to do grevious harm to anything or anyone. Some of them will be, or want to be, authentic jihadists with all the operational connections needed to move them towards their goals. We want the FBI and others to be tracking them, and stopping them. However, from what is being said so far the news is far outrunning the actual threat. In an odd inversion of the Boy Who Cried Wolf we have here the Agent Who Caught the Wolf. “I got him. I got him! I GOT HIM!!!” Yet on closer inspection the applauding crowd sees the wolf is a stray puppy who chews shoes. Glad it’s caught and stopped but not a wolf, lads. No trucks, no real plans, no explosives, just blow. The alleged leader, in seeking Al Qaeda gets an informant? How lucky is that? I’ll be very curious to learn how much of the “plot” came from the informant’s lips. I for one always suspect the guy with the wildest ideas of being the man on the payroll. Stay tuned.

Terror Plot?

The TV Wall of Shameless Noise has now got Muller, FBI Apex, talking at the City Club in Cleveland…starting out with a segue from the announcements in Florida Muller is saying these men tried to buy 3 tons of ammonium nitrate… as though in Florida. The newscaster quickly interjects that he is talking about the men recently arrested in Canada not in Florida but then Muller keeps talking. The TV keeps cutting back to the Florida events. Like magicians on the stage wowing the rubes with their slight of hand.

Ahhh! Extremism can begin anwhere…in academic settings, in prison, among young people confused about who they are… oh the Enemy Within is making its unwelcom return.