Tragedy in America: A nice patriot from Virginia whose truck had a very patriotic paint job, has been stripped of his right to license plate free speech. The plates carried a coded White Power message, citing Hitler and David Lane.

We'd like to think Gawker partly responsible for this, as we picked up (along with many other blogs) the photo of a Ford F-150 with an "Everything I Need to Know About Islam I Learned on 9/11" theme on the back. That lovely message was joined by a Confederate flag and a license plate reading 14CV88.

Seems random enough, right? Aha, but it's not. As commenters on various blogs pointed out, there's a secret Nazi supremacist message in there. The 14 stands for the fourteen words of the cutesy old David Lane adage "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children." The CV stands for "Confederate veteran," because apparently this truck owner is 172 years old. And the 8s stand for the eighth letter of the alphabet, H. Doubled together they are Heil Hitler. Yay, everyone!

Anyway, the Council on American-Islamic Relations noticed the secret message and pointed it out to the Virginia DMV, which is now banning the plates. So, crusty old racist Civil War veteran P. Jackariah Biggsby is now driving around with illegal plates. Well done, internet. You made this happen. Get this patriot off the road.

[WaPo]