Did the Earthquake Affect the Earth's Rotation?

By all accounts, yes it did, at least probably. Here is one early report:

Enzo Boschi, the head of Italy's National Geophysics Institute, likened the quake's power to detonating a million atomic bombs the size of those dropped on Japan during World War II, and said the shaking was so powerful it even disturbed the Earth's rotation.

``All the planet is vibrating'' from the quake, he told Italian state radio. Other scientists said it was early too say whether the rotation was affected by the quake.

It turns out that Boschi had only good guesses about the effect of the quake on the earth's rotation. The measurements had not been completed when he offered the above opinion.

I realized it couldn't have been much of a problem for humanity: the sun continued to rise and set at the forecasted times; and the mainstream media didn't make a big fuss about it.
Here's Slate's piece on the effect of the quake on the earth's rotation.

To read more than you might ever want to try to understand on this topic, try this site and a few of the links there. [Thanks to Jack, Chris, Ben, and JB for the help and pointers]

My conclusion: the quake was caused by Al Sharpton's effect on global warming.