TOBY HARNDEN: How politics works: Senator Christopher Dodd and his cosy Irish cottage.

Check out the picture of Dodd’s “cottage” (provided to me by Rennie), where he spends summers and which is looked after during the rest of the year by a caretaker. It’s not exactly the humble tumbledown abode with a leaky thatched roof, a fireplace with peat thrown on it and donkey tethered outside that the Senator might like you to envisage.

The nearby village of Roundstone is a celebrity hangout. . . . Given the Irish property boom, a conservative estimate would be that the house would be worth approaching $1 million, and very possibly much more than that.

So why hasn’t Dodd declared a more realistic true value of the property? No doubt he didn’t want to highlight the fact that he had a third splendid pile, to go along with his residences in DC and Connecticut, as he sought the presidency (remember how all those homes harmed John McCain?). Maybe he knew it would mean further scrutiny of his connection with the pardoned crook Downe.

Read the whole thing.