Good morning, dear City Desk readers, and welcome to an especially incensed edition of Freedom Friday!

You know what’s got my goat this morning?Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander‘s horrendous crusade against single cigar sales. The kids use them to smoke the marijuana, sure. But the kids will smoke out of anything! The cigarette foil, the hollowed-out apples, the dented cans, the Sobe bottles, the garden hoses, the seasonal squash, the hollowed-out hot dogs, the pens, and even the ground! And you know what? A 14-year-old who can score weed and a single cigar knows how to make things happen. Smoking out of the ground will be a cakewalk for these kids!

And the worst thing about Alexander’s crusade—the worst!—isn’t her nanny instincts, but this horrible, off-the-cuff lie:

“I believe the major source of income at a gas station should be gasoline and the major source of income at a corner store should be nonperishable food items, so I wonder what kind of business they’re really in.”

Newsflash, councilmember: Despite what you “believe,” gas stations DO NOT MAKE MOST OF THEIR MONEY ON GAS. In fact, the sale of gasoline eats into their profit margins in much the same way that a stoner eats into that seasonal squash once it has done him/her right. But I gotta hand it to you; that closing insinuation is brilliant. My next story will be titled, “Gas station owners are using petrol as a front for a MASSIVE BLUNT RUNNING OPERATION.”

Yesterday, an Egyptian cab driver picked me up at the corner of Georgia Ave. and Ingraham St. NW., where cab drivers seldom go, and we chatted about Norman Borlaug, the recently deceased father of the Green Revolution, for the entire ride to Adams Morgan. The driver said that Borlaug’s death had inspired him to tuck away even more money every month so that he could return to Egypt and make things grow.

This does not happen on WMATA. Operators do not talk to you about how, thanks to agricultural engineering, Eqyptian farmers can finally grow apples.

IN OTHER WORDS: Fuck the medallions/‘Feel The Power’ of Taxis/(It’s A Haiku, Y’all!)

Dear Environmentalists: I know where you’re coming from. I grew up playing in cricks and forests, boogie-boarding in roadside ditches filled up to the brim with storm-water runoff, and walking around barefoot. I took nature into my heart, ringworm and everything, ya’ll. But it just ain’t right to fuck the Midwest like this, if for no other reason than it gets really cold there this time of year:

“The carbon-based free lunch is over,” declared Exelon CEO John Rowe, neglecting to mention that his company’s free lunch is only beginning. Under the House’s climate-change bill, a few utilities—primarily those that have made big bets in renewable and nuclear energy—are poised to clean up once Congress hands them carbon emission credits. The bill sets aside 35% of the free credits for utilities. Exelon and other “renewable” utilities will get a huge piece of that pie.

An internal memo produced by Bernstein Research in June described how Mr. Rowe met with investors to rejoice that the House legislation will allow Exelon to rake in additional revenue—by some estimates, up to $1.5 billion a year. Others will pay for this Exelon privilege, of course—notably, Midwestern customers of traditional coal utilities who will see their energy prices double.

God, I have a headache I’m so angry. Don’t get scammed, y’all.