Homegrown terrorists (Or Rushing on in)

Have been arrested in Miami.

Seven people were arrested Thursday in connection with the early stages of a plot to attack Chicago's Sears Tower and other buildings in the U.S., including the FBI office here, a federal law enforcement official said.

As part of the raids related to the arrests, FBI agents swarmed a warehouse in Miami's Liberty City area, using a blowtorch to take off a metal door.

The official told The Associated Press the alleged plotters were mainly Americans with no apparent ties to al-Qaida or other foreign terrorist organizations. He spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to pre-empt news conferences planned for Friday in Washington and Miami.

Miami U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta said in a statement that the investigation was an ongoing operation and that more details would be released Friday.

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Residents living near the warehouse said the men taken into custody described themselves as Mulims and had tried to recruit young people to join their group, which seemed militaristic.

The residents said FBI agents spent several hours in the neighborhood showing photos of the suspects and seeking information. They said the men had lived in the area about a year.

The men slept in the warehouse, said Tashawn Rose, 29. "They would come out late at night and exercise. It seemed like a military boot camp that they were working on there. They would come out and stand guard."

She talked to one of the men about a month ago: "They seemed brainwashed. They said they had given their lives to Allah."

Rose said the men tried to recruit her younger brother and nephew for a karate class.

"It was weird," she said.

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The 110-floor Sears Tower is the nation's tallest building. Its skydeck was closed for about a month and a half after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Several terrorism investigations have had south Florida links. Several of the Sept. 11 hijackers lived and trained in the area, including ringleader Mohamed Atta, and several plots by Cuban-Americans against Fidel Castro's government have been based in Miami.

Jose Padilla, a former resident once accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive bomb in the U.S., is charged in Miami with being part of a support cell for Islamic extremists. Padilla's trial is set for this fall.

I'm not going to speculate on what was going on in Miami. This news just broke in Miami and the MSM is rushing to find out why it went down. A law enforcement official? That could be the janitor at the FBI office for all we know. Why is the blogosphere so eager to rush in? Hasn't AP blown it before? Anyone remember the coverage of New Orleans after Katrina?

No rush here, I'm going to bed. These could be terrorists or people looking to form a Karate class.(Read quote above) We'll learn more in the morning.

Others blogging on this- Wizbang, Stop the ACLU, Outside the Beltway, A Blog for all, Sister Toldjah, Blogs of War, Florida Cracker, Michelle Malkin, Captain's Quarters,