GLOBAL WARMING causes more sex? Then I guess I should be upset that it was snowing again this morning . . . .

IN THE MAIL: Stuart Archer Cohen’s The Army of the Republic: A Novel.

I’VE MENTIONED THE DANGERS OF A MAJOR MIDWESTERN EARTHQUAKE IN THE PAST, but here’s more on that subject:

People in a vast seismic zone in the southern and midwestern United States would face catastrophic damage if a major earthquake struck there and should ensure that builders keep that risk in mind, a government report said on Thursday.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said if earthquakes strike in what geologists define as the New Madrid Seismic Zone, they would cause “the highest economic losses due to a natural disaster in the United States.”

Yes, and overall the region is underprepared. But what’s this? (Gulp!)

Tennessee is likely to be hardest hit, according to the study that sought to gauge the impact of a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in order to guide the government’s response.

In Tennessee alone, it forecast hundreds of collapsed bridges, tens of thousands of severely damaged buildings and a half a million households without water.

Transportation systems and hospitals would be wrecked, and police and fire departments impaired, the study said.

I don’t like that at all.

UPDATE: Reader Scott Dismuke emails:

Found the story you posted today from Reuters on the likeliness of an earthquake along the New Madrid fault of great interest. I grew up about 25 miles from New Madrid, Missouri and of course in 1990 Iben Browning infamously predicted an earthquake around the first of December.

Anyhow, there is project going on in your back yard at ORNL that is working in Memphis (and other communities) to prepare for a catastrophic event, just like this. Thought you’d like to see the website.

Very interesting.

MEET THE NEW BOSS, YADA, YADA: Obama to delay repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’. I’m guessing that this bodes poorly for a repeal of the Defense Of Marriage Act, too.

UPDATE: Brian Doherty: “Still, his apparent unwillingness to be bold on something he considers a matter of both justice and wise policy–and that he has clear political support on–should be disconcerting to his fans.”

And Gay Patriot is not amused.

WHY GUNS ARE BETTER THAN BUTTER: Over at Forbes, I explain why war is no longer the health of the state. (Bumped).

NICK GILLESPIE: As We Look Past the Next Four Years of Virtually Certain Unmitigated Crapitude, Here’s a Couple of Thoughts on Election 2012.

EYEBLAST TV: Eric Holder calling for “reasonable restrictions” on Internet speech.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh adds some context: “So if I’m right that then-Deputy Attorney General Holder was discussing this proposal — which seems likely — rather than some more comprehensive attempt to restrict online speech, then it seems to me that his view of the matter is moderate and defensible, though I have come to disagree with it.” Read the whole thing.

HAIL, HAIL Freedonia!

RADLEY BALKO: “I’ll stand arm in arm with the gay rights crowd when it comes to demanding equality under the law. But forcing a private dating service to spend money to reconfigure its website and retool its matchmaking formula to accommodate homosexuals isn’t a civil rights issue. It’s petulant and silly. Ultimately, it’ll also be counterproductive.”

IS BABE-BLOGGING A SIN? No, but stupidity should be.

A SAD, SPOOKY WORLD without GM and Chrysler.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE ON MARK CUBAN: Should Cuban be conducting his defense in public on his blog?

MORE MEDIA RETRENCHMENT: Associated Press To Cut 10 pct. jobs in ’09.

PLANT PARENTHOOD:  Testing the Aquaglobe. I have one of those in my office, and it keeps the plant on my coffee table healthy.

WELL, DISSENT IS the highest form of patriotism!

TEST-DRIVING the electric Mini Cooper.

DRUG POLICY REFORM GROUPS weigh in on Eric Holder.

AT LEAST HE’S NOT MINCING WORDS: Cardinal Stafford criticizes Obama as ‘aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic’.

ERIC HOLDER ON GUN CONTROL:

As Deputy Attorney General, Holder was a strong supporter of restrictive gun control. He advocated federal licensing of handgun owners, a three day waiting period on handgun sales, rationing handgun sales to no more than one per month, banning possession of handguns and so-called “assault weapons” (cosmetically incorrect guns) by anyone under age of 21, a gun show restriction bill that would have given the federal government the power to shut down all gun shows, national gun registration, and mandatory prison sentences for trivial offenses (e.g., giving your son an heirloom handgun for Christmas, if he were two weeks shy of his 21st birthday). He also promoted the factoid that “Every day that goes by, about 12, 13 more children in this country die from gun violence”–a statistic is true only if one counts 18-year-old gangsters who shoot each other as “children.” . . .

Holder played a key role in the gunpoint, night-time kidnapping of Elian Gonzalez. The pretext for the paramilitary invasion of the six-year-old’s home was that someone in his family might have been licensed to carry a handgun under Florida law. Although a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo showed a federal agent dressed like a soldier and pointing a machine gun at the man who was holding the terrified child, Holder claimed that Gonzalez “was not taken at the point of a gun” and that the federal agents whom Holder had sent to capture Gonzalez had acted “very sensitively.” If Mr. Holder believes that breaking down a door with a battering ram, pointing guns at children (not just Elian), and yelling “Get down, get down, we’ll shoot” is example of acting “very sensitively,” his judgment about the responsible use of firearms is not as acute as would be desirable for a cabinet officer who would be in charge of thousands and thousands of armed federal agents, many of them paramilitary agents with machine guns.

Ouch. Read the whole thing.

I’M SHOCKED, SHOCKED: Inspector general says Joe the Plumber’s files searched improperly. “A state agency director authorized improper checks of state computer systems for confidential information on ‘Joe the Plumber,’ according to a report released this afternoon by Ohio’s inspector general. Nearly four hours after the release of the report, Gov. Ted Strickland announced he had placed Helen Jones-Kelley, the suspended director of the Department of Job and Family Services, on unpaid leave for one month. Republican leaders used the report’s findings to call on Strickland to fire Jones-Kelley for abusing her authority to snoop into the background of Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher.”

A NEW CRITICISM OF PRESIDENT BUSH: Maybe the President shouldn’t be whiling away precious hours with his nose in a book.

Yeah, we’d have gotten things under control in Iraq a lot faster if Bush hadn’t been buried in Braudel.

A BIG DVD SALE at Amazon.  You didn’t used to see $5.99 DVDs.  I’m glad that’s changed.

FREEMAN DYSON speaks out.

UH OH: Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapses during Federalist Society speech.

HEH: Antiwar groups fear Barack Obama may create hawkish Cabinet.  “Antiwar groups and other liberal activists are increasingly concerned at signs that Barack Obama’s national security team will be dominated by appointees who favored the Iraq invasion and hold hawkish views on other important foreign policy issues.”

UPDATE: Useful idiots discovering they’re no longer useful.