EUGENE VOLOKH DALE CARPENTER on religious liberty and single-sex marriage.

UPDATE: The dreaded co-blogger confusion strikes again! Thanks to reader Mark Garbowski for pointing out the error.

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS IN WASHINGTON, D.C.:

Last Friday’s power outage forced the White House to go to backup generators and left a 30-block section of downtown Washington darkened for nearly three hours. The blackout raises anew worries that the nation’s capital still isn’t prepared to respond to an unexpected crisis nearly seven years after 9/11. At the heart of the problem are sluggish responses from public officials and an alert system that can be all but paralyzed by indecision and inaction. This must be fixed now — before there’s a real emergency. . . . Heaven help us if there’s ever a natural catastrophe or major terrorist attack.

Read the whole thing.

INSURGENCY BY PRESS RELEASE? Well, it’s cheaper and safer.

MORE ON Countrywide Mortgage, the “Subprime Six,” and the Obama campaign.

THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF coffee and chocolate. Just don’t forget your red wine!

DANIEL DREZNER ON China’s soft power gap.

EARL OFARI HUTCHINSON: Obama, Lay Off Black Fathers! “Obama’s portrait of the irresponsible absentee black father is a distorted stereotype.”

PATTERICO ON THE ASSOCIATED PRESS:

Now, in a slightly ironic twist, the AP is taking content from a blog site. Namely, mine.

In a news item about the e-mail from Judge Kozinski’s wife that I posted on this site, an AP article lifted numerous passages.

I counted 154 words quoted from my post. That’s almost twice the number of words contained in the most extensive quotation in the Drudge Retort.

Yes, but they’re news professionals, so they shouldn’t have to pay for content. That’s for everybody else. . . .

UPDATE: Bill Hobbs comments: “Patterico catches the Associated Press doing what the AP threatened to sue bloggers for doing. . . . By the time this fight is over, the AP may well be offering to pay bloggers to link to AP stories.” Well, possibly. More likely, they’ll fold their tents quietly.

ANOTHER UPDATE: In response to Orin Kerr, those words certainly belonged to someone, that someone wasn’t the AP, and the AP nonetheless used them without permission. If that use is okay, then . . . .

WOULD SOMEBODY PLEASE explain markets to John McCain?

INTERESTED IN AGING AND LONGEVITY RESEARCH? Check out this conference at UCLA starting June 27.

RAND SIMBERG:

What’s amazing is not so much that Congress won’t allow us to pump oil, which we badly need to do. They won’t even allow us to look for it, especially if it’s in a “pristine” (aka barren coastal plain, frozen in the winter and a mosquito-infested bog in the summer) region, at least according to Senator McCain.

What are they afraid we might find?

Indeed.

WHAT? SAY IT AIN’T SO! Law School Is Not a Golden Ticket.

Plus, Legal education’s perfect storm. “Schools, Enrollment, and Debt Are Up, Jobs Are Down.”

A LOOK AT Obama’s accomplishments. Some further observations here. “Vapor trail?” Well, his rise has been meteoric.

THE SUBPRIME SIX:

1. Senator Chris Dodd-(D-Conn.)
2. Kent Conrad (D-ND.)
3. Alphonso Jackson (D-HUD Secretary)
4. Donna Shalala-(D-HHS Secretary)
5. Richard Holbrooke (D-ASecretary of State)(and future Sec. State?)
6. James Johnson (D-Obama Veep Selection)

Were there no Republicans involved?

UPDATE: Ah, Alphonso Jackson is a Republican. I seemed to remember this as a bipartisan scandal.

ANOTHER UPDATE: But kinda lopsided. Video here.

MORE: Reader Jack Slovic emails:

Let me see if I get this right:

Sen. Dodd Calls the CEO shopping for a mortgage doing what “millions of people do” and upon hearing he¹s a friend of Angelo thinks this is the same deal “Millions” will be able to “negotiate.”

Then Kent “No Clue” Conrad also calls his buddy Angelo (whom he’s never met) and having no idea that he’s getting a better deal.

I’m puzzled. If Mr. Dodd and Conrad are really this stupid that they call the CEO of a national mortgage company looking for a loan and don’t expect a special deal they’re too dumb to be in congress. If on the other hand they think we’re stupid enough to believe these lame excuses they out to be run out of town on a rail.

Finally the unanswered question is who gave these two clowns Angelo’s phone number?

Good point.

A LIST OF FAVORITE Brian Eno songs.

AL GORE: Still guzzling energy in Nashville. “Despite adding solar panels, installing a geothermal system, replacing existing light bulbs with more efficient models, and overhauling the home’s windows and ductwork, Gore now consumes more electricity than before the ‘green’ overhaul.”

Lots of talk, but more bloated than ever. It’s almost like a metaphor.

THOUGHTS ON WIVES MURDERING HUSBANDS, and whether the statistics are trustworthy.

UNRELIABLE EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY:

“It was burned into my mind, my eyes … what he looked like.”

Burned, “seared,” whatever — you can’t trust these things as much as you’d think.

ANOTHER THING TO IMPERIL WORKERS: “Damn that globalization, technology, and automation! . . . Now please be quiet while I watch the US Open being played in La Jolla, Californa, while I’m on a campaign bus in Flint, Michigan.”

MICHAEL SILENCE: The AP has earned itself a blogswarm.