Good morning City Desk readers, and happy Freedom Friday. Before we get started, I’d remind you all that John Pinette performs this weekend at the DC Improv, Cool Papa’s Party run for just one more week at MetroStage, and David Plotz—former Washington City Paper man and current editor in chief of Slate—reads from and signs copies of Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible at Politics & Prose on Saturday. The rest of the week is equally awesome. Now for some news:

• Greater Greater Washington has the scoop on an emergency tree removal last night that tied up some parking spaces on S St. NW between 15th and 17th:

Last night, residents of S Street NW between 15th and 17th discovered Emergency No Parking signs stating that the trees on the block would be removed. The residents had not known about any tree removal, nor had the local ANC commissioners. The blocks had already lost several mature trees in recent years, and residents worried about losing more.An hour, several DC Council staff, some representatives of the Mayor, and some frantic calls to DDOT’s Urban Forestry Administration later, everyone found out the truth. Only three trees on the two blocks were coming down. These trees were either dead or seriously damaged in recent storms, but, according to ANC Commissioner Jack Jacobson, “There was evidently a problem that the contractor had decided timing on removing the trees and had not properly consulted with DDOT, much less the neighborhood.”

• Good, honest, hard-working people are turning into blathering idiots. No need to name names, because the Good, honest, hard-working people who have endorsed Rush Limbaugh know who they are (the absolutely batshit wackos, not so much.) Yours truly hasn’t managed to put together a less-than-rabid post on Rush without punching himself in the groin—so he’s going to stop. Last word: libertarians, classical liberals, et al., should distance themselves from the whole Republican party/Rush Limbaugh/Michael Steele debacle—and if they won’t, at least have the good graces to stop bitching about being lumped in with those fucking idiots by the “mainstream media.”
• Speaking of libertarians trying to ride the Republican gravy train (ugh), Pete Eyre of Bureaucrash has written a sycophancy-free recap of CPAC (Conservatives Putting Assholes in Charge/Conservatives Pecking At Ciabatta/Conservative Political Action Committee), of which there are very few.

OK, back to 2nd Best Of. (Y’all are gonna love this shit.)