It turns out, rather unsurprisingly, that Chris Dodd has been lying all this time about whether he knew he was getting preferential treatment from Countrywide:

 

WASHINGTON — Despite their denials, influential Democratic Sens. Kent Conrad and Chris Dodd were told from the start they were getting VIP mortgage discounts from one of the nation’s largest lenders, the official who handled their loans has told Congress in secret testimony.

Both senators have said that at the time the mortgages were being written they didn’t know they were getting unique deals from Countrywide Financial Corp., the company that went on to lose billions of dollars on home loans to credit-strapped borrowers. Dodd still maintains he got no preferential treatment.

Dodd got two Countrywide mortgages in 2003, refinancing his home in Connecticut and another residence in Washington. Conrad’s two Countrywide mortgages in 2004 were for a beach house in Delaware and an eight-unit apartment building in Bismarck in his home state of North Dakota.

The source for these claims is apparently one Robert Feinberg, who worked in Countrywide’s infamous “VIP section”.  As noted in the original story, the fact that Feinberg offered this testimony under oath to the Senate Ethics Committee indicates that the Committee is actively investigating both Dodd and Conrad.  So, let’s review the bidding on Dodd – he’s been lying for years about the value of his Irish cottage on his Senate financial disclosure forms, he originally came by said cottage at a bargain-basement price after helping the cottage’s co-owner obtain a pardon from President Clinton, he got preferential treatment from a company he was supposed to be regulating which ended up being at the center of the current financial meltdown (Countrywide), he’s been lying about his knowledge of that preferential treatment all along, and he is still basically selling access to his office to the highest bidding lobbyist.  Chris Dodd has become, without question, the apotheosis of corruption in a body with a long and storied history of corruption.

Chris Dodd would almost surely have been left for dead by now, primed to lose in the Democratic Primary.  There’s only one problem: President Obama is doing his best to keep Chris Dodd’s tenure in the Senate alive.  You know, Obama: the guy who was going to bring “Change” to Washington and put an end to “politics as usual.”  The very same Obama who has held numerous fundraisers since taking office for Dodd, the most crooked Senator in Washington, just because he needs Dodd’s help pushing pet legislation through the Senate. 

I will say this for Obama: he’s acting in a manner consistent with his behavior prior to taking office.  On the other hand, I can’t necessarily discern how this is different from the way Democrats have been doing it in Washington for decades.  Maybe we’ll see a difference if Conrad gets in trouble in ND, too.