ROBERT HIGGS: The Continuing Puzzle of the Hyperinflation that Hasn’t Occurred.

A lot of people are puzzled.

ADAM OZIMEK: Legalizing Marijuana Could Save Thousands Of Lives.

CYNTHIA YOCKEY: Conservative Arguments For Gay Equality.

WSJ: The Facts About Fracking. “The U.S. is in the midst of an energy revolution, and we don’t mean solar panels or wind turbines. A new gusher of natural gas from shale has the potential to transform U.S. energy production—that is, unless politicians, greens and the industry mess it up. . . . The question for the rest of us is whether we are serious about domestic energy production.”

R.I.P. Peter Falk. “Falk used to hang around the park near my house sometimes. Once he joined our basketball game. I think he was actually wearing a raincoat. People said, ‘Pass it to Columbo.’ He was a terrible player. …”

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The Failure Of Al Gore: Part One.

It must be as perplexing to his many admirers as it is frustrating to himself that a man of Vice President Gore’s many talents, great skills and strong beliefs is one of the most consistent losers in American politics. . . . Gore has the Midas touch in reverse; objects of great value (Nobel prizes, Oscars) turn dull and leaden at his touch. Few celebrity cause leaders have had more or better publicity than Gore has had for his climate advocacy. Hailed by the world press, lionized by the entertainment community and the Global Assemblage of the Great and the Good as incarnated in the Nobel Peace Prize committee, he has nevertheless seen the movement he led flounder from one inglorious defeat to the next. The most recent, failed global climate meeting passed almost unnoticed last week in Bonn; the world has turned its eyes away from the expiring anguish of the Copenhagen agenda.

The state of the global green movement is shambolic. The Kyoto Protocol is withering on the vine; it will almost certainly die with no successor in place. There is no chance of cap and trade legislation in the US under Obama, and even the EPA’s regulatory authority over carbon dioxide is under threat. Brazil is debating a forestry law that critics charge will open the floodgates to a new round of deforestation in the Amazon. China is taking the green lobby head on, suspending a multibillion dollar Airbus order to protest EU carbon cutting plans.

It is hard to think of any recent failure in international politics this comprehensive, this swift, this humiliating. Two years ago almost every head of state in the world was engaged with Al Gore’s issue; today the abolition of nuclear weapons looks like a more hopeful cause than the drafting of an effective international treaty that will curb carbon emissions even a little bit.

Read the whole thing. Gore’s fame was a bubble, a hothouse flower that could not survive the harsh realities of the post-Bush era, where many enthusiasms are failing for insufficiency of other people’s money.

Also, there’s the hypocrisy:

If the heart of your message is that the peril of climate change is so imminent and so overwhelming that the entire political and social system of the world must change, now, you cannot fly on private jets. You cannot own multiple mansions. You cannot even become enormously rich investing in companies that will profit if the policies you advocate are put into place.

It is not enough to buy carbon offsets (aka “indulgences”) with your vast wealth, not enough to power your luxurious mansions with exotic low impact energy sources the average person could not afford, not enough to argue that you only needed the jet so that you could promote your earth-saving film.

You are asking billions of people, the overwhelming majority of whom lack many of the basic life amenities you take for granted, people who can’t afford Whole Foods environmentalism, to slash their meager living standards. You may well be right, and those changes may be necessary — the more shame on you that with your superior insight and knowledge you refuse to live a modest life. There’s a gospel hymn some people in Tennessee still sing that makes the point: “You can’t be a beacon if your light don’t shine.” . . . Consider how Gore looks to the skeptics. The peril is imminent, he says. It is desperate. The hands of the clock point to twelve. The seas rise, the coral dies, the fires burn and the great droughts have already begun. The hounds of Hell have slipped the huntsman’s leash and even now they rush upon us, mouths agape and fangs afoam.

But grave as that danger is, Al Gore can consume more carbon than whole villages in the developing world. He can consume more electricity than most African schools, incur more carbon debt with one trip in a private plane than most of the earth’s toiling billions will pile up in a lifetime — and he doesn’t worry. A father of four, he can lecture the world on the perils of overpopulation. Surely, skeptics reason, if the peril were as great as he says and he cares about it as much as he claims, Gore’s sense of civic duty would call him to set an example of conspicuous non-consumption. This general sleeps in a mansion, and lectures the soldiers because they want tents.

What this tells the skeptics is that Vice President Gore doesn’t really believe the gospel he proclaims. That profits from his environmental advocacy enable his affluent lifestyle only deepens their skepticism of the messenger and therefore of the message

Indeed.

CREEPY HEADLINE OF THE DAY: Woman marries her dead fiancé .

JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG, climate skeptic.

THIS ISN’T GOOD: The Return Of The Broadcast Treaty? I don’t think that more sweeping copyright laws are what the world needs right now.

A SLOGAN FOR 2012: RE-ELECT OBAMA: Because Bombing Foreigners to Smithereens Is Only Wrong When Republicans Do It! Sounds like a winner!

WELL, WE’RE HALFWAY THERE: So now that New York will have happily-maried gay couples, can we get started on letting them have the closets full of assault rifles?

UPDATE: Reader Dean Jackson is harshing my mellow: “Around April 15th next year, there’s gonna be a whole lot of couples in New York that are going to be pretty pissed when they find out they have to pay more taxes as a couple than they do as singles.” Well, I certainly pay a marriage penalty. But doesn’t DOMA mean that the IRS can’t recognize a gay marriage, so that they’ll still file separately? Which would be a sweet deal if I could get it . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: “Note that it passed with Republican votes — and in a legislative chamber run by the GOP.”

ROGER KIMBALL: Conrad Black: justice denied (again).

UNSEEN EFFECTS of the Stimulus.

EPIDEMIOLOGY AND SOCIAL MEDIA: Conference Fail? Nobody’s perfect.

Meanwhile, this is interesting. “If you start digging around in the evolutionary medicine literature, you’ll see that one oft-repeated tenet is that many more ‘chronic’ and ‘lifestyle’ diseases are actually caused by microbes than we currently realize. (I’ll note that there is active disagreement here in the field–one reason noted is that many of these diseases would decrease one’s fitness and thus they are unlikely to be genetic, but many of them also have onset later in life than the prime reproductive years, so–still controversial). But whether you agree on the evolutionary reasoning or not, I think it’s safe to say that those who make this claim (like the Neese & Williams book I linked) are probably right on the overall assertion that more and more of these ‘lifestyle/genetics’ diseases are going to be actually microbial in cause than we currently realize.”

TV TORNADO WARNINGS really make a difference. I’m sure they do, though I’m also sure that tornado warning fatigue is setting in with a lot of folks.

UPDATE: Reader Kevin Johnson writes: “I understand your point about warning fatigue, but if people aren’t taking the weather seriously after the events of this summer then there’s not much help for them. I’ve lived in Knoxville since ’83 and this is by far the worst summer I can remember for damaging bad weather (of course I wasn’t a property owner until ’99, and I’m sure that makes a difference as to my concern level).”

TOO HOT for the HuffPo.

EDITORIAL: IT’S TIME TO LEGALIZE FIREWORKS IN MAINE.

JAMES TARANTO ON MYTH AND REALITY: “The truth is, there’s an Emperor’s New Clothes aspect to Obama’s supposed status as the World’s Greatest Orator. We’ve heard the myth of his eloquence over and over, yet he keeps ‘unexpectedly’ making gaffes or tin-eared statements.”

By now, those are pretty old clothes.

THE HILL: GOP Rep. McCarthy to Obama: ‘Get off the golf course’ and ‘get engaged.’

CHANGE: Gay marriage legal in New York State after Senate passes historic bill 33-29. I think it’s good that it was passed by the legislature rather than imposed by a court.

IT’S BEEN BASICALLY BLACKED OUT IN THE NEWS, but Thomas Ball’s courthouse-steps self-immolation is still big news in the blogosphere. Was that blog-comment calling his death spouse-abuse really from Amanda Marcotte? On the Internet, nobody knows if you’re a dog.

UPDATE: An email from famed blogger/blog commenter Assistant Village Idiot:

Assistant Village Idiot here. People who have a hair across their ass in general about the family court system are trying to keep the Thomas Ball story alive as if he is some kind of victim. In his efforts to have unsupervised visits with his daughter, he was told to have his visits supervised by Monadnock Family Services. He refused because he blames them for his problems.

I deal with that agency all the time, though not the children’s services – I have for 30 years. They are entirely reasonable people who make adjustments and accommodations for people who don’t like them or are suspicious of them all the time. Hell, they are a mental health center, so most of their clients are difficult and suspicious. They are not some Orwellian controlling agency. Ball decided that being pissy and proving that he was right about one incident ten years ago was more important than seeing his daughter. He’s no victim.

Family courts may indeed be prejudiced against fathers – I hear that, but I don’t know. I’ve certainly dealt with many cases of NH courts ruling in favor of fathers in custody disputes, though, and I don’t see a massive trend here. It pays to remember that MFS cannot tell its side of the story because of confidentiality, and that some pathological people hide by trying to tie themselves to legitimate causes. Wolves hide in sheep’s clothing, because it doesn’t do any good to hide in wolves’ clothing, does it?

Well, this is why there should be more media coverage, rather than a blackout.