Were Obama and Barney Frank responsible for the subprime crisis?

Although it's not too surprising to see the level of partisan vitriol escalating so close to the election, the facts about the subprime mortgage crisis are getting so badly mangled that I decided to turn to snopes.com to see what they had to say about it.

First, on the contention that Barack Obama filed a lawsuit to force banks to make loans to poor people: False. I can't pull anything from that site, so click here to read the post.

Next, on the 1999 email warning against potential troubles with FannieMae and FreddieMac: True. Click here to read. Still, that was NINE YEARS ago. What's more serious is the idea that attempts by the Bush Admin. to institute more regulation of the GSEs was stopped by a Democratic Congress.

I think there's plenty of blame to go around on this issue, and neither major party can claim to be innocent.