Looks like those sweetheart mortgages Chris Dodd snagged from Countrywide as a “Friend of Angelo,” its CEO, aren’t the only sugar-coated real estate deals from which the senior Connecticut senator has benefited. The intrepid Kevin Rennie of the Hartford Courant, who has been dogging Dodd’s Countrywide dealings, has now turned up an Irish real estate deal sweeter than Baileys Cream–but with the whiff of a week-old flounder.

I’d encourage folks to read Rennie’s entire story in the Courant.  Here’s the Cliff Notes version:

• Dodd is great friends with New York high-roller Edward R. Downe, Jr.
• Downe gets convicted of tax and securities law violations.
• Dodd gets Bill Clinton to pardon Downe on his last day in office.
• Downe introduces Dodd to William Kessinger.
• Kessinger and Dodd buy, as partners, a fancy country “cottage” [see photo] on a ritzy Irish island.
• A couple years later, Kessinger sells Dodd his interest for what would appear to be much less than its market value.
• Dodd plays fast-and-loose with the way he reports the value of the property on his Senate financial disclosure forms.

So far, whereas a British paper has picked up Rennie’s story, no MSM outlets in the US other than WSJ’s subscription-only Political Diary have done so.  Will they now?

Via his spokesman Robert Gibbs, Pres. Obama today called for Roland Burris to go. When will Obama-the-Ethical call for Dodd’s departure?