Fred Phelps stoops even lower!

Absolutely right. I wouldn't cry about a jury nullification, but a pardon would be really bad news. When Presidents look for excuses to ignore or get around the law, bad things happen. It is never the government's role to determine that people simply aren't worthy of the protection of the law, for any reason.

No, it doesn't martyr them to anyone other than themselves. Certainly not to freedom of speech.

Even if it did impede on that, the fact that they are violating the last sacred rite of someone's existence trumps any liberty to disseminate (unfounded no less)information. You can't protect free speech without protecting free thought or conscience.

Cattle die, kinfolk die
You yourself will die
One thing that does not die
Are words of fame well earned

IOW, if you sponsor an assassin now, we'll send you this Tickle Me Elmo for being a friend of PBS (Phelps Being Shot)

Anal DPs from John Holmes & Lex Steele?

If anyone wants to sponsor me traveling expenses and tools I'll kill him myself, and dismantle his church.

Okay, Phelps is a nut job. But why does his intolerance anger people when there are so many others — including people on this board — who show a casual intolerance of gays, women, blacks, fat people, liberals, or Methodists?

Async was, i think, on the right path about forgiveness, as I think Jesus would likely have wanted to forgive such behavior and use it as a teaching opportunity about the cost of hatred. But I also think he might have invoked the "judge not, lest ye be judged" tenant that really is the lesson here.

Obviously, it's wrong for Phelps and his people to show up at the funerals of gay men, and worse, fallen soldiers. Obviously. But is it any better, and equally less Christian, to tell gay people they're going to hell? Or to stand on a street corner with a giant picture of an aborted fetus and tell me I'm going to hell? Isn't that, as Jesus pointed out, between me and God?

Maybe the warnings about worshiping false idols involves a mirror.

It's not Phelps' intolerance of gays that pisses people off, it's his utter perversion of the Christian faith. Phelps is about as close to Christianity as the KKK.

Remember that the only thing that angered Christ here was the moneychangers in the Temple using His Father's name to rip people off. We're just following His example in getting royally pissed at Phelps and his like.