That is a scary piece of news right there
I think this is the dept. of homeland security trying a little too hard to show results. Don't get me wrong, I'm not sympathizing with crazy people who want to murder innocents in the name of god/religion/insanity/waffles, but would the kid have found the resources he was looking for and gone through with it if it hadn't been made so easy? Some (maybe many) of us had times in our youth where we believed in something that was utterly absurd and had the interest, if not the inclination to carry out antisocial or violent acts.
What if the government police agencies had sting operations that found angry youths who had interest in joining a street gang? Would it be ethical or legal to have agents acting as gang leaders get them a gun and a car and send them off to do an initiation drive-by on an enemy, and then arrest them for the crime?
This "war on terrorism" is not a war of weapons and soldiers, but a war of ideology, and we can't hope to win with bullets and arrests. We need to educate in the hopes of enlightening people and allowing them to educate and enlighten each other. If we aren't able to properly educate, it is likely that there are barriers that make the quality of life so difficult that teaching isn't effective. You cannot teach starving people about equality and the sanctity of life. It's not just that it's difficult for the malnourished to absorb rational, ethical information, it is hypocrisy. The rational mind refuses those ideals which don't apply in the real world.
Our society is out of balance, and we seem to have trouble understanding the difference between actions and the motivation for those actions. If someone steals food because they want to starve others, that is considered criminal, it could be called terrorism. If they steal food to sell to others,it is also criminal, but we often call it commerce (you don't have to look at the practices of your average corporation to see that we let it happen far too often). If, on the other hand someone steals food because they are hungry, we feel like assholes calling them criminals because it is unjust and unethical to deny the basic needs of life to another human being (unless we happen to be terrorists or corporations, then it's no problem to throw them in prison or kill them).
Why was this kid so messed up that he felt what he was doing was right? How many resources does it take to conduct a smarmy sting operation vs. sending a few people talk some sense into him? If teachers are paid less than cops wouldn't even the conservatives agree that it would have made more sense to get this kid into counseling? The arrest of this kid hasn't made us any safer, it's made things more dangerous as any other people like him will now be more likely to keep their mouths shut and figure out how to commit these kinds of acts in isolation. It really isn't difficult to make a large bomb, it isn't difficult to kill a lot of people quickly, what is difficult is finding the people who may do these things and preventing them. The last thing we want is for the bad guys (or potential bad guys) to be driven deep underground.
Far to often we look at those who threaten us as "evil", when in truth they are desperate and scared. Would you ever point a gun at someone without having any fear of them? If you aren't afraid of them and they pose no threat you would have no reason to point a gun at them. All of these "terrorists", why are they threatening us? It could be that they are just brainwashed and misguided in their understanding in the world (and I would agree there is plenty of that), but it also may be because they are afraid. It is possible that they have accepted the brainwashing and disinformation only because they were already in a desperate place brought about by circumstances which are the result of other humans being dicks. Using violence and incarceration to stop terrorism is like saying you can cure someone's cold by hitting them in the head with a cricket bat every time they sneeze. They will eventually stop sneezing, but you haven't fixed a thing.