The Housing Slump Even Hurt the Fed Chairman

How bad is the housing crisis these days? Bloomberg News is reporting that Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, has lost $260,000 in home equity since purchasing his Capitol Hill digs in May of 2004. Bernanke bought his new four-bedroom home for $839,000. Like many folks in the housing bust, Bernanke might soon find himself "upside down" with a mortgage that's more than the value of his home. [LA Land]

Will the housing crisis financial meltdown spell the end of the all-consuming conservative belief in the infallibility of markets? [Salon]

David Mamet's Village Voice essay declaring his liberal apostasy delighted conservative bloggers around the globe. But LA blogger Chris Clarke wondered how the essay played with earlier conservative converts and dreamed up this Mametesque exchange between Mamet himself and Dave Horowitz. [Creek Running North]

The New York Time's searchable database of Hillary Clinton's public calendar as First Lady "gets it right" because it shows the paper is learning to let "its readers to engage the information on their own terms, with their own agendas." [AramSqualls]