From Larry O'Dell at the ASSociated Press:

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.

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.

Imaginative and hyberbolic rhetoric, eh? OK, let's try this...

Judge Robert King is a child rapist who secretly drinks the blood of large animals that he kills at the local zoo. He also has Jeffrey Dahmer-like fantasies of rape, murder and cannibalism.

Hey, this Imaginative and hyperbolic rhetoric stuff is FUN!

I'm all for free speech, but at a funeral for a fallen soldier?

Better not show up here. Westboro would be rendered off-planet.