The Department of Brain-Dead InJustices™ weighs in with this story about Phelching Phred Phelps getting away with another one.
A federal appeals court on Thursday tossed out a $5 million verdict against protesters who carried signs with inflammatory messages like “Thank God for dead soldiers” outside the Maryland funeral of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq.
For which the phuckheaded little phaggot and his phat-assed phucknozzles should probably have been beaten within an inch of their pathetic little lives – but I digress.
A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the signs contained “imaginative and hyperbolic rhetoric” protected by the First Amendment. Such messages are intended to spark debate and cannot be reasonably read as factual assertions about an individual, the court said.
Oh?  So if I said something to the effect of “all former community organizers should be properly ventilated”, I could skate in federal court?  Are the Black-Robed Tyannical Bench Jockeys™ certain  they wanna set that kind of precedent?
A jury in Baltimore had awarded Albert Snyder damages for emotional distress and invasion of privacy. The 2006 funeral of Snyder’s son, Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder in Westminster, Md., was among many military funerals that have been picketed by members of the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas.
Albert Snyder’s attorney, Sean E. Summers, said he and his client were disappointed.
“The most troubling fact is it leaves these grieving families helpless,” Summers said. “If you can’t use the civil process, you have no recourse.”
Actually, Mr. Summers, your client – as well as all his Patriot Guard Rider friends – do  have one recourse left to them.  That is, if  they’re willing to exercise that option.
Like the song says…the First Amendment protects you from the government…
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One response to “But it doesn’t protect you from us.”
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The court ruled properly:
One of the three panel members, Judge Shedd, didn’t reach the First Amendment issue, but concluded that (1) there wasn’t intrusion upon seclusion under Maryland law because the protest was in a public place, and not even very near the funeral (p. 40), (2) the protest was not “extreme and outrageous” enough for purposes of the emotional distress tort because it was “confined to a public area under supervision and regulation of local law enforcement and did not disrupt the church service.”
http://volokh.com/posts/1253826869.shtml
Phelps is heartless and insane, not criminal.