From Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are only components of the disaster, but they’re the origins of the subprime-mortgage crisis that got the disaster started, and certain prominent Democrats treated Fannie and Freddie as their very own ATM. Barney Frank, whose “lover” was a senior executive at Fannie Mae, famously said he wanted to “roll the dice a little bit more toward subsidized housing.” Another Democrat on Barney’s House Financial Services Committee insisted there was “no crisis” at Fannie and Freddie, and most devastating of all, Barack Obama himself, for once not merely voting “present,” led the resistance to John McCain’s attempt to put the brakes on Fannie and Freddie recklessness while there was still time.

Maybe Tom Brokaw will think to bring this up at tonight’s debate.

Barney Frank’s Former Boyfriend Herb Moses A Fannie Mae Executive

According to Ed Morrisey:

…the relationship provided a serious conflict of interest for Frank.  Frank was supposed to oversee the actions of Fannie Mae as a government-sponsored entity.  If he had a partner, spouse, or family member in position to be affected by Frank’s decisions, then Frank should have recused himself from that committee.  His failure to do so represents a breach of public trust regardless of Fannie Mae’s failure.

Bill Sammon at Fox News reports on one potential argument for a conflict of interest that may have Frank on the defensive:

So did Frank’s partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the agency’s push to relax lending restrictions.

Now that Fannie Mae is at the epicenter of a financial meltdown that threatens the U.S. economy, some are raising new questions about Frank’s relationship with Herb Moses, who was Fannie’s assistant director for product initiatives. Moses worked at the government-sponsored enterprise from 1991 to 1998, while Frank was on the House Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over Fannie. …

The two lived together in a Washington home until they broke up in 1998, a few months after Moses ended his seven-year tenure at Fannie Mae, where he was the assistant director of product initiatives. According to National Mortgage News, Moses “helped develop many of Fannie Mae’s affordable housing and home improvement lending programs.”

“Media Mum on Barney Frank’s Fannie Mae Love Connection” reports that head of the House Banking Committee Barney Frank’s former significant other Herb Moses

UPDATE: Fox News finally smells the coffee and picks up the story:

“Lawmaker Accused of Fannie Mae Conflict of Interest” from Fox News

Well of course it is, darling.

Rep. Barney Frank said Monday that Republican criticism of Democrats over the nation’s housing crisis is a veiled attack on the poor that’s racially motivated.The Massachusetts Democrat, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said the GOP is appealing to its base by blaming the country’s mortgage foreclosure problem on efforts to expand affordable housing through the Community Reinvestment Act.

“They get to take things out on poor people,” Frank said at a mortgage foreclosure symposium in Boston. “Let’s be honest: The fact that some of the poor people are black doesn’t hurt them either, from their standpoint. This is an effort, I believe, to appeal to a kind of anger in people.”

Herb worked to loosen regulation at Fannie Mae.

And it’s also homophobic to note that, at the time you were supposed to be overseeing Fannie Mae, you were, um, romantically involved with one of its executives specifically in the field of expanding subprime mortgages to credit-poor buyers.

Ok, if you have a vivid visualization capacity, stop reading now!  That Ace guy is very visual.  Also quite funny.

So, while you were supposed to be overseeing this guy, you were instead taking it up the squeakhole from him with the manic hydraulic fury of a tricked-out V-12 jackhammer with a short-circuiting regulator run by an epileptic Con Ed worker with an ancestral vow of vengeance against asphalt.

Oh: I forgot to mention: It’s also racist to mention rich whitebread suburban doucheholster Bill Ayers.

Says Obama?

No.

Says the neutral news organization the AP.

More parroting of Obama talking points by the AP on this issue.