Below The Beltway

As if the unending number of unsold homes in my neighborhood, and Northern Virginia in general didn’t confirm it, data released today shows that housing prices are still falling:
Home prices continued to slide in October as the supply of unsold homes grew. The new statistics are the latest to suggest that the once-booming housing market [...]

It took three weeks, but Virginia has officially declared Jim Webb the winner of the 2006 Senate race:
RICHMOND, Nov. 27 — The Virginia State Board of Elections on Monday certified Democrat James Webb as the winner of one of the closest U.S. Senate races in state history, making official what his opponent, Republican Sen. George [...]

For the first time in 33 years, and for the time being, the same school has No. 1 teams in both football and basketball:
National championships in both sports would be the crowning achievement.
For the time being, Ohio State can savor being the first school in nearly 33 years to be ranked No. 1 simultaneously in [...]

Amid massive protests, Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Turkey for his first visit to a Muslim country as Pope:
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI began his first visit to a Muslim country Tuesday with a message of dialogue and “brotherhood” between Christians and Muslims in an attempt to ease anger over his perceived criticism [...]

As the nation argues over what to call the current conflict in Iraq, the Marine Corps is saying in confidential reports that the fight in the western part of the country is basically lost:
The U.S. military is no longer able to defeat a bloody insurgency in western Iraq or counter al-Qaeda’s rising popularity there, according [...]

Now that Mitt Romney has made it clear that he is running for President in 2008, the media is beginning to ask a question I thought we’d left behind in 1960 when John Kennedy became the first Catholic President, whether America is ready for a Mormon President:
Although Mormons are known for family centeredness, hard work [...]

Michael Kinsley writes in the Post this morning about the way in which the Internet seems to make people want to reveal even the most mundane details about their lives:
There is something about the Web that brings out the ego monster in everybody. It’s not just the well-established tendency to be nasty. When you write [...]

People actually respond to incentives when making career choices:
The opportunity to become abundantly rich is a recent phenomenon not only in medicine, but in a growing number of other professions and occupations. In each case, the great majority still earn fairly uniform six-figure incomes, usually less than $400,000 a year, government data show. But starting [...]

As controversy continues to swell around the death of an elderly woman in Atlanta during an apparently mistaken drug raid, things may have gotten alot worse for the Atlanta police:
Three officers were wounded when they entered Kathryn Johnston’s home looking for cocaine based on tips from an informant, according to the search warrant released Monday [...]

Much is being made of the decision by NBC News to begin calling the conflict in Iraq a “civil war”:
NBC News on Monday began referring to the Iraq conflict as a civil war, adopting a phrase that President Bush and many other news organizations have avoided.
Matt Lauer said on the “Today” show that “after careful [...]