The fallout from the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stock continues. Yes, the markets have rebounded somewhat. A little good financials news here and there has prevented another freefall, just like with the Bear Stearns weekend of doom earlier this year. But we're in a weird time. J.P. Morgan Chase announces that its income fell 53 percent and the stock soars because it all could have been...

I've been worried about Fannie Mae for a long time. A few months ago I wrote a column about it. More than 10 years ago, when it was riding high, I was worried too. Now I'm really worried. As of 11 a.m. EDT, Fannie shares were off by 32 percent and selling for under $9 a share. Within the past year, shares had sold for over $72 a share. Fannie—and its sister company, Freddie Mac—always s...

Okay, we're in the silly season of vice presidential speculation. Anyone who knows something isn't talking, and anyone who is talking doesn't know anything. Still, in that spirit, let me suggest three names—all women—who are not getting that much attention as vice presidential possibilities for Senator John McCain. Each is accomplished, but they've been overlooked either because they're...

Thin and elegant, smart and maternal, Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain, you might think, would be popular figures with an appeal that went beyond that of their dueling husbands. But that's not the case. Polls show that neither is particularly popular, nothing like the beloved Laura Bush or, before that, Barbara Bush. I have a couple of theories as to why that is, and it reflects more poorly on us th...

Today, after the Supreme Court's rejection of Washington's ban on handgun ownership, I don't feel safer, but I don't feel much worse, either. I wrote about the ban earlier this year after a friend of mine, Tim Spicer, a young man and aspiring musician and artist, was murdered in the District as part of fatal carjacking. I wrote at the time of my sadness and also my own ambivalence about D.C.'s poli...