Good morning, City Desk readers, and welcome to another Freedom Friday! How about this "heat wave," enh? ENH?

Michael Phelps, Olympiad and hero to long-necked people everywhere, crashed his Escalade in Baltimore last night. To give you an impression of how bad the accident was, here's WaPo's headline: "Phelps Uninjured in Two-Vehicle Crash." There wasn't enough room in the headline to mention that the person in the other car was left uninjured as well–only "shaken up."

It's an important story because Michael Phelps is A FAMOUS SWIMMER AND IMPORTANT YOUNG MAN, and when he was fresh out of high school, he was arrested for driving under the influence. Five years is nothing in journalism years–so maybe the the solid graf that addresses Phelp's sobriety was worth including. Then again, there's this [emphasis mine]:

Police found no reason to perform any tests on him, [Officer] Guglielmi said. Officers also examined both vehicles and found no evidence of drugs or alcohol, he said.

Throwing in that bit about the drugs–something WaPo didn't bother to do in a single one of these traffic accident stories from Tuesday–now that was pure genius! After all, there was that DUI, and the picture of Phelps taking a monster hit with those Aquaman lungs.

But as good as WaPo is about keeping us abreast (swimming joke!) of Phelp's fuck-ups, the paper was strangely silent about Subway, which dropped the heavily wreathed Phelps like an ugly newborn seven months ago in the wake of the bong pictures, only to bring him back on board in recent weeks for a series of print and TV commercials, in which Phelps gushes about his love for jalapenos and banana peppers alongside a nervous and sad-looking Jared.

C'mon, Phelps gettin' his endorsement back wasn't worth even a blog post?

Do you cry easily, sweet reader? The September issue of Esquire features a heart-breaking story by John H. Richardson about Warren Hern, the only remaining late-term abortion provider in the country. For the last several decades, Hern has been the target of brick-throwing, gun-firing, vitriol-spewing, COLLEAGUE-MURDERING "Pro-lifers." Told with an elegant yet enthralling second-person voice, Richardson's story is almost enough to make a non-believer embrace Original Sin, if only as an explanation to what tempted Bill O'Reilly's mother to raise the spawn of Satan as her own. In fact, it's almost enough to inspire a guy–who, as Dogbert once said, doesn't like to get "gooky stuff" on his "paws"–to put his money where his mouth is. Too bad  I'm too damn dumb for abortion school!

Obesity is apparently off limits, but I'm pretty sure it's still OK to call smokers "addicts." Thankfully, there's a less unhealthy alternative on shelves as we sprechen! From Jacob Sullum at Reason:

A new review of 89 studies confirms that the cancer risk associated with smokeless tobacco is tiny when compared to the cancer risk associated with cigarettes....

[The authors] estimate that if all male cigarette smokers in the U.S. had used smokeless tobacco instead, the number of tobacco-related cancer deaths among them would have been 1 percent what it actually was in 2005 (about 1,100 vs. 105,000).

Holy metastasizing lung tumors, Batman, why hasn't some do-gooding (good-doing?) public health advocate endorsed Snus? Sullum can tell you:

This comparison highlights the absurdity of the main "public health" objection to promoting smokeless tobacco as a harm-reducing alternative to cigarettes. Opponents of this strategy claim to be worried that it could lead to more tobacco-related mortality in the long run if it attracts nonsmokers to smokeless tobacco. But Lee and Hamling's numbers indicate that if a significant percentage of smokers switched to oral snuff, the tobacco-related death toll would be smaller than it is now even if every nonsmoker in America started using oral snuff too. By the professed standards of public health, which seeks to minimize morbidity and mortality, this is a no-brainer. As with the opposition to electronic cigarettes, something else is going on here: a moralistic crusade to conquer sin disguised as a scientific quest to conquer disease.

If you've never read Jacob Sullum on cigarettes (and weed), you should. Especially if you're the kind of person who knows what's best for everybody but your coke-snorting daughter. (Catch that? I just said "F you!" to Vice President Joe Biden, Destroyer of Families!)

Happy Friday, y'all. Don't get scammed!

While we're on the topic of elevating abusive cops above world leaders, I've got two more candidates for future beer summits–and one of 'em's local!

In Mobile, Alabama, cops tazed and pepper-sprayed a deaf man with a mental age of 10 because he spent too much time in a dollar store bathroom:

Love...says he was not feeling well and was in the bathroom for about a half-hour before the police "throw poison under the door." Soon they broke into the bathroom, he recalled in an account he wrote for his family, and "the police get the tazz three strings in my stomach, chest and hand and hit my head." Later, he says, "I saw police laugh at me."

According to Jacob Sullum at Reason, the cops arrested Love even after they learned he wasn't the average vagrant.

And according to HuffPo's Arthur Delaney, D.C. cops recently pulled a Gates-like stunt on U Street:

[Tuma] told the Huffington Post that in a loud sing-song voice, he then chanted, "I hate the police, I hate the police."

One officer reacted strongly to Tuma's song. "Hey! Hey! Who do you think you're talking to?" Tuma recalled the officer shouting as he strode across an intersection to where Tuma was standing. "Who do you think you are to think you can talk to a police officer like that?" the police officer said, according to Luke Platzer, 30, one of Tuma's companions.

Tuma said he responded, "It is not illegal to say I hate the police. It's not illegal to express my opinion walking down the street."

According to Tuma and Platzer, the officer pushed Tuma against an electric utility box, continuing to ask who he thought he was and to say he couldn't talk to police like that.

Tuma was arrested for disorderly conduct.

In fact, all three men–Gates, Love, Tuma–we’re charged with disorderly conduct. How many of them are going to sip beers in the garden behind the White House? The mentally disabled deaf man? He wouldn't have much to say. The loud-mouth gay guy? He had it coming. And Gates? Well duh! He’s already famous!

And a little side note to Warren Goldstein at HuffPo, who frames white privilege by talking about how he almost house-sat the wrong house but wasn't arrested when a patrol car showed up because he is white: You were spared arrest, Mr. Goldstein, not just because of your skin color, but also because you were polite. Authority demands respect, and when you give it, authority rewards you by not arresting your ass on bullshit charges.

More beer summits!