Actually, it means other things, too: You will not read in today's issue about Chuck Lane, how good an idea it is to legalize marijuana (complete list of links too long to provide here), or cheese dip. There also will be no chanting of USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! for any reason. There is no need for that anymore. Freedom is dead.

Do you really think it's a coincidence that the first day without Freedom Friday is Friday the 13th?

Speaking of Friday the 13th, Donald Dossey, founder of the Stress Management Center/Phobia Institute in Asheville, N.C., says that between 17 and 21 million individuals alter their routine in some way on this day because of superstitions. Irrational fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskevidekatriaphobia (actually, Dossey made this term up). "For some people it's just mild anxiety,'' says Dossey. "Some people stay in bed all day." (Should we call and check on Riggs?)

I'm no clinician, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt seems like he might have been a classic case of someone suffering from that long word. Thomas "Dr. 13" Fernsler, a mathematician at the University of Delaware who got that nickname from his extensive study of that number, notes that FDR refused to leave on a train trip on the 13th. But that's not even the crazy part: He died in April 1945 on Thursday the 12th! He was so scared of Friday the 13th, he died!

There is a poem about paraskevidekatriaphobia, but I don't really recommend it, as one of the stanzas is "I think back to my mother/her winter boots capsized w/blood/& my tiny fists lit from within."

A "quirk" of the calendar means there have already been two Friday the 13ths this year. And on one of them, Congress passed the stimulus package! Coincidence?

One last thing: I have a black cat.

Be scared! And follow me on Twitter!

In essence, Gates was arrested for saying that he felt violated and oppressed on his own property. And President Barack Obama was right: The Cambridge police did "act stupidly." The arresting officer, Sergeant Jim Crowley, claims “there was a lot of yelling, there was references to my mother,” and yet neither charge would hold up even as a ticketable offense.

But for the record, finding yourself in handcuffs after arguing with a police officer isn't something that just happens to blacks and Latinos. Cops everywhere are always on the lookout for opportunities to assert their authority, and, as in Gates' case, they'll gladly misinterpret public safety laws in order to show a civilian who's the boss.

Need another example of the universality of angry cops asserting their authority for no good reason? Last night, libertarian activistis J.D. Talley and Pete Eyre were turned away at the Canadian border after being detained for over four hours. The two are touring the U.S. and Canada as part of the Motorhome Diaries; basically, happy hours, talks, and meet-ups with other libertarians. Pretty harmless, right?

"[The mobile home was] searched by both state agents and the K-9 patrol. The MHD Guys were filming as the neared the check point, but the video was deleted and they were informed if they continued to film, record, or take pictures they would be arrested. A box of literature from the Alliance of the Libertarian Left was taken, and a copy of Crispin Sartwell’s “Against the State” was left out on the counter....

Their laptops are now in the possession of the state agents...

One agent has accused them of ’spreading misinformation.’

The guys have been told that the state agents are looking for “Pornography or Heinous Propaganda.” When asked for a definition of “Heinous Propaganda” or the applicable statute they were told it was available online, but they don’t have computers or Internet access.

Update 3: Computers returned, State Agents still in possession of box of ALL Literature.

The Canadian border patrol cited an incident in Jones County, Mississippi as the reason for denying Eyre and Talley entrance. We wrote about the same incident many Freedom Fridays back. To refresh your memory: Talley, Eyre, and an additional friend--all of them white--were pulled over by a Mississippi law enforcement officer. When the Motorhome Diaries crew asked why they had been pulled over and then refused to identify themselves until the officer answered them, the officer placed all three men under arrest, charged them with violating bogus public safety laws, and impounded their vehicle. They were held overnight and lost a lot of money in incarceration fees to the Jones County Sheriff's Office.

In short, the color problem--which is real--is subsumed by the much, much larger cop problem, which affects everyone, even if it affects minorities disproportionately more so. We shouldn't turn a blind eye to the petty cases and we shouldn't lose sight of this once Gates has won his lawsuit.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell and a teensy bit more about Maureen Dowd, after the jump.

• The MSM would rather praise Barack Obama for what he says than hold him accountable for what he doesn't do, hence the flowery recaps of yesterday's speech with little mention of the broken promises. Great example: On Wednesday, Rachel Maddow reported that Robert Gibbs, in response to a question about what Barack Obama was doing to overturn/abolish Don't Ask Don't Tell, said that the president "is working with the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs on making that happen." Yet according to Maddow, "a Pentagon spokesman said just yesterday that that‘s not actually happening, that there is no planning underway. There‘s no work underway inside the Pentagon toward changing the policy, despite the fact that the White House keeps saying that there is." As Greg Pollowitz at the NRO's Media blog points out, Maddow failed to mention that Gibbs lied. (Lefties, like righties, need that kind of shit spelled out for them.) In summary, the Obama Administration said its working to change Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and yet it's not actually doing that. At least his speeches are uplifting! My thoughts on DADT.

• In case you missed it, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd plagiarized. The NYT didn't care, Josh Marshall (the victim) didn't care, and Maureen Dowd didn't care enough to formally punctuate her apology letter to HuffPo or address the fuck-up in her most recent column. Then one of my heroes, Jack Shafer, went and threw her a fucking bone, NSA. Every time I see that woman's wizened yet beautiful visage, my blood boils. How the fuck does she get away with it? Would William Kristol have gotten away with plagiarism? Newser's Michael Wolff thinks we should all just let it go: "Dowd is like some much-vaunted high school type whose success and popularity drive everybody else mad with either envy and spite or inspire a perverse (evidence of great-self-loathing) desire to be her way-too-loyal friend and supporter....Indeed, she is famously surrounded by an inside circle of friends and supporters—other famous-type columnists and New York Times reporters—who famously help her write her column. She regularly lifts their thoughts and sentences, which, since they are unpublished (supposedly), is not plagiarism—though it certainly is insiderism....Such insiderism is why so many people, especially the outsider-type bloggers, despise her. Her evident self-satisfaction and the obvious echo chamber in which she resides, not to mention her apparent ability to get by without doing too much work, rankles." I am TOTALLY BLUSHING RIGHT NOW!

OK, I'm going to watch this video of Maureen Dowd laughing at her own jokes! See y'all later!

Nat Hentoff, 50-year veteran of the motherfucking Village Voice, has joined D.C.'s--nay, the world's--very own Cato Institute as a senior fellow (H/t to Tom at Fr33 Agents). This news is over a week old, and I'm simply flabbergasted that I haven't heard about it until now. After all, it's not every day that a well-known liberal gadfly decides to hang his hat on a libertarian rack--perhaps that's why no one made a big to-do? Here's Hentoff on the big move:

"Becoming a senior fellow of the Cato Institute – from whose publications I've often quoted – enables me to continue following the advice of my earliest mentor, Duke Ellington, who told me never to be caught up in a musical or any other categories," said Hentoff. "Duke said that it's always the individual's expression that defines his identity. All these years later, if I had to describe myself, it would be as an uncategorizable libertarian – and that's why I'm delighted to be at the Cato Institute, where freedom rings."

For more on Hentoff's Duke Ellington reference, check out Alan Bock at the OC Register.

Arthur Delaney reports in his cover story for this week (aptly named "Watchmen," in homage to Alan Moore) on the effectiveness of crime cameras. This snippet illustrates just one of the cameras system's many flaws:

In February 2007, two men were shot in broad daylight on the 1600 block of Euclid Street NW, well within the purview of a camera. The camera had panned away from the incident. Third District Commander Larry McCoy told the Washington Times that the footage showed “nothing that’s going to close the case out.”

Retired Lt. Michael Smith was repeatedly frustrated by the cameras’ attention span. “You always have those cases,” he says. “You get a glimpse of people running away, you get the suspect running away. Sometimes you’ll see people hanging in the area and it panned away and then it will turn back and it’s complete pandemonium because somebody fired off rounds. The camera is constantly panning.”

There's something of a kerfuffle going on in the beltway blogosphere (but only there, because these sorts of disagreements aren't real/based in reality) over libertarian economist Arnold Kling, who compared the passing of the stimulus bill to having his home ransacked by thugs. The American Prospect's Adam Sewer and Vanity Fair's James Wolcott saw race-baiting, and suggested Kling only used the thug metaphor because Barack Obama is black. Sewer and Wolcott are kind of like the liberals who knew, just absolutely knew, that the conservatives would try to invoke fears of miscegenation during the election (when in fact, the only people to stir up those fears were, well, "non-racist" liberals). The Atlantic's Megan McArdle responds here, and Reason's Nick Gillespie responds here.