ECO-TERROR UPDATE:

Declaring fires set at a police station, an SUV dealership and a tree farm acts of terrorism, a federal judge Wednesday sentenced the first of 10 members of a radical environmental group to 13 years in prison.

U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken commended Stanislas Meyerhoff for having the courage to “do the right thing” by informing on his fellow arsonists after his arrest. But he declared his efforts to save the earth by setting fires were misguided and cowardly, and contributed to an unfair characterization of others working legally to protect the environment as radicals.

“It was your intent to scare and frighten other people through a very dangerous and psychological act — arson,” Aiken told Meyerhoff. “Your actions included elements of terrorism to achieve your goal. . . . Prior to sentencing, Wood asked for leniency, arguing that most of the fires were not acts of terrorism because they were set at businesses, not government facilities.

The prosecution countered that based on communiqués issued after the fires, the blazes were meant to retaliate against the U.S. Forest Service for allowing a Vail ski resort to expand into a national forest, the University of Washington for genetic-engineering research and the government for prosecuting radicals who set earlier fires at the SUV dealership.

Read the whole thing. This kind of behavior, like the terrorism aimed at abortion clinics and animal-rights attacks on scientific researchers, is dangerous, destructive and needs to be stepped on, hard.