>The (potential) application of statutes may be outrageous for the kind of infraction.

You can stop right there, because that's the whole point. If the government had charged them with trespassing and fined them each $1000 or put them in jail for two weeks (and then taken the opportunity to have a good hard look at the security of their facility), nobody would be complaining about anything. This is about proportionality.

> Don't be surprised that they do throw the book at you, if you give them the means to do so.

The idea is that they should not have the means to do so. "Making the government look stupid" is not a felony. Trespassing is not a felony. "Here's the defendant, find me the crime" is a miscarriage of justice. A law that allows them to do that to anyone is a broken law that demands to be fixed. And yes, there are a lot of them, and they all need to be fixed.

The litany of charges seems a bit much, but a light sentence for trespassing is too little.

The penalty, must deter future attempts by other people. $1000 and a couple weeks of jail is not going to deter other similar protesters.

Fixing on-site security will - with the neat side effect to deter criminals, terrorists and so on as well.

Assume the security was 'fixed'. Doesn't mean that someone couldn't come and chop the fence with full intention of getting arrested as part of a political protest.

If the known penalty for doing this (even with fully operational security) is light, then that activity isn't really deterred.

The government isn't supposed to deter harmless political protests.

The whole idea of civil disobedience is to get yourself put on trial for something you're willing to do the time for. "They aren't being deterred, the prison sentence has to be increased" is obviously a flawed response to that unless your goal is to suppress dissent without regard to how draconian and disproportionate you have to be in order to do it.

1. trespassing at a nuclear processing facility is not harmless political protest

2. insisting on physical security (i.e. no trespassing) at a nuclear processing facility is not in conflict with the idea of peaceful assembly and political protests

You are saying "government nuclear weapons facility" as if it was some serious thing. If it were actually serious in any way to anybody then three geezers would't enter this facility to spray and pray just by cutting few fences some random morning.

Is this something you believe because it should be true, or because you have some evidence that it is true?

He's being facetious.

Obviously nuclear weapons facilities are very important. Obviously three hippies aged 57, 63, and 82 shouldn't be able to break in so far as to spray paint a building holding nuclear weapons.

PSA: If you go looking for trouble, don't be surprised if you get into trouble.

PSA: Three old geezers shouldn't be able to bypass nuclear weapon facility "security".

PSA: if you think trespassing and singing songs is terrorism, you're a very disturbed individual.

PSA: You and I might think that it's unfair to throw the book at somebody for minor infarctions. That doesn't mean the government wont.

There was a sign right on the fence claiming that the maximum penalty was one year.