The White House has issued not one but two press releases accusing the New York Times of "gross negligence" in blaming George W. Bush's policies for the housing bubble.

The Times, in a thoroughly silly series called "The Reckoning," spent a lot of time interviewing lots and lots and lots of respectable economic experts, and then ignoring them and totally making up a story about who's at fault for the housing bubble, according to black-eyed White House flack Dana Perino, who is only now recovering from the wound she incurred in the Baghdad shoe-throwing incident. And the White House is mad, mad, mad!

The thing is — and it kills us to admit this — we're kind of with Dubya on this one.

Look, no one likes the fact that Wall Street has disappeared and billions of dollars are missing and overpriced condos are now slightly less overpriced. But are we supposed to believe that our George W. Bush engineered a worldwide economic collapse just in time to screw over his Democratic successor? Come on. That would imply some kind of diabolical cunning, some evil competence.

Now, if the Times had found a way to pin this one on Cheney, we would have totally believed them.

(Photo by Eric Draper/White House)