Letters to the Editor
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Criminalizing Ideological Motives
Aside from reiterating the first poster's comment that it's the legal system, not the law that needs reform, I'd like to address the discomfort that some other posters have with the law itself by way of a tangent.
Individuals who (rightly) point out the sentencing discrepancies between someone who engages in arson for terroristic reasons vs. ones like insurance fraud are discovering what's been a source of frustration for many individuals on the right: sentencing not the act itself, but the motive underlying it. Conservatives take issue with this act when it pops up in the form of hate crime legislation; they argue that it has a chilling effect on free speech and that murder, assault, or any other crime is equally reprehensible simply because it happened, regardless of whether the reason for it is racism or gay-bashing--an argument that I suspect not many people who are reading this have a sympathetic ear for.
So if you're concerned that burning a building is punished differently when it's done by ELF to protest environmental policies, ask yourself if you'd be equally uncomfortable were a hate crime sentencing enhancer applied to someone who vandalizes or commits arson on a Temple or predominantly minority church.