The Los Angeles Times has an interesting piece on just how happy homeowners are with the mortgage interest tax deduction. As one writer points out, the threat of taking it away tends to spark passionate responses:

In my Wednesday column, I argued that the federal tax deduction for home mortgage interest should be trimmed — because instead of helping first-time homeowners, a worthy public policy goal, it mostly subsidizes big mortgages.

I wasn’t surprised to learn that a lot of readers disagreed. Angry emails flooded in. Many of the objections were well reasoned, although one reader just called me a Marxist. He must not have noticed that Mitt Romney, who’s not a Marxist, also proposed capping the mortgage deduction — actually, all itemized deductions — during his presidential campaign.