Tammany Hall's senior senator
The Chris Dodd-Countrywide scandal refuses to die, despite the three major TV networks' refusal to cover it in their broadcasts, according to the Media Research Center. In fact, had Sen. Dodd not followed up his initial denials about the sweetheart mortgages he got from Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Nozilo with an explanation that one wag called "hilariously implausible," the scandal might have died from journalistic neglect by now.
But this scandal has legs, and commentators from across the spectrum are weighing in. The left mostly doesn't get what all the fuss is about. We paraphrase: "A Senate Banking Committee member who got $75,000 worth of VIP treatment from Countrywide is pushing a bill that would let Countrywide offload more than $25 billion of its worst subprime loans onto taxpayers? Hey, it's not like he accepted drywall and gutters."
Perhaps the most biting commentary was written by Democrat David Kahane, a National Review Online columnist whose lasting impression of Sen. Dodd is "his shock of white hair, his vaguely New England-ish accent, his hazy demeanor and his utter lack of shame."
"I know you're as shocked as I am," Mr. Kahane told his readers, "to discover that Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Countrywide) has been identified as a 'Friend of Angelo,' amid charges that the Enron of subprime mortgages gave him a sweetheart deal. ... You're probably also stunned that Dodd — the chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, and the alleged other half of the Edward Moore Kennedy Memorial Waitress Sandwich — had to admit the other day, 'I don't know what interest rates are today.'"
Moreover, he wrote, "it will no doubt astonish you to learn that Dodd, who some say ran for the Democrat nomination for president this year before his campaign collapsed from terminal anti-charisma, along the way shook down — excuse me, 'collected millions of dollars in campaign contributions from' — various subprime lenders and other real-estate types whose activities he oversaw.
"Is this a great racket — excuse me one more time — country, or what? The whole thing makes me proud to be a member of the Tammany Party. Yes, the party of Slavery, Segregation, Secularism, and Sedition — that Tammany party. ... The Tammany Party as in Tammany Hall, which was once led in its earliest days by none other than that great Democrat, Aaron Burr, who nobly served his country as Thomas Jefferson's vice president, shot and killed Alexander Hamilton, and was later tried for treason. ... And while the Tammany party ain't what it used to be, it sure is great to see Chris Dodd emerging as a throwback to our glory days."
AI
