DICKIE SCRUGGS SENTENCED: Scruggs Gets 5 Years in Prison; Judge Calls Conduct “Reprehensible”.

NEW YORK TIMES: “About that Mortgage, Senator . . .”

It turns out that the chieftain of Countrywide — which is smack in the middle of the mortgage mess — extended privileged borrowing status to two Senators, Chris Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, and Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota. Both Senators deny any ethical violations.

The disclosure of the V.I.P. arrangments by the political website Politico.com left constituents angry and suspicious — particularly because the revelations came just as Congress was rousing itself to do something about the mortgage foreclosure crisis.

It would be nice to think that members of Congress did not go into the process with any undue friendships with the mortgage companies.

The Senate ethics committee, normally known for profound silence in the face of members’ scandals, has proposed having more stringent disclosure rules as a part of the chamber’s standing regulations. Currently, home mortgages are exempt from loan disclosure rules. (Why? we’d like to know. Is there something about graft given in the form of a home mortgage that is less corrupting than other forms of graft?)

Indeed. Plus this: Mortgages: Sleaze-o-rama:

More sleaze oozed out of the subprime mortgage mess this month with news that two U.S. senators got sweetheart loans from a giant mortgage company.

One of them, Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., heads the Senate Banking Committee, which gives him heavy clout over mortgage lenders. The other is Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D.

Angelo Mozilo, the controversial chairman of Countrywide Financial, gave both of them loans at low fees and reduced interest rates. . . .

It’s difficult to say what is more remarkable about the senators’ behavior: the petty venality or the stupidity.

Mr. Conrad was the more crass of the two. While shopping for a loan, he called James Johnson, the former chairman of mortgage giant Fannie Mae and a former top adviser to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Mr. Johnson happened to be with Mr. Mozilo when Mr. Conrad’s call came through. Mr. Mozilo got on the line and got the senator’s loan application rolling.

Mr. Dodd says he didn’t ask for favors from Mr. Mozillo. Maybe so, but the senator knew that Countrywide had placed him in a special program for VIPs. It got him special treatment and an interest rate available only to special customers. Mr. Conrad borrowed more than $1 million, Mr. Dodd more than $775,000.

It also turned out that Mr. Johnson himself got a sweetheart loan from Countrywide. When that fact surfaced, he resigned his position heading Mr. Obama’s vice presidential search committee.

Sleaze-o-rama, indeed. And as I’ve noted before, the real problem isn’t so much the mortgages, as the culture of entitlement that made the mortgages seem no big deal.

Heck, even The Socialist Worker sees the problem:

BUT WHILE millions grapple with rising mortgage payments or see their wealth evaporate with falling house prices, members of Congress continue to benefit from favorable treatment by mortgage lenders–the very same lenders who will get a bailout if proposed legislation passes.

The housing bill’s key backers in the Senate–Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), head of the Senate Banking Committee, and Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who chairs the Senate Budget Committee–both got special deals from the nation’s biggest mortgage lender, Countrywide, thanks to their connections with the company’s CEO, Angelo Mozilo.

“Dodd, the lead sponsor of the bill, secured no-closing-cost mortgages at interest rates of 4 percent and 4.25 percent, and continues to insist he got no special favors,” the Rocky Mountain News reported. Conrad admitted calling Mozilo for help with a discount on a $1 million mortgage for a beach house, but also claims that it was legitimate.

Now Dodd and Conrad are in position to return the favor to the mortgage industry. If the current bill passes the House, Countrywide and other lenders will see U.S. taxpayers assume responsibility for mortgage defaults.

Do tell. Plus, from the Hartford Courant: “Come Clean, Senators.”

SHOWING CONTEMPT FOR CONGRESS? I was tryin’ to conceal it.

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, PEOPLE WOULD BE ARRESTED FOR “OFFENSIVE” YOUTUBE VIDEOS: And they were right! “After seeing a YouTube video made by Andre Moore, Philadelphia police broke down Moore’s front door at 6 a.m. yesterday and arrested him for assault. Unlike the case of eight Florida girls who assaulted another girl, however, Moore’s video didn’t contain evidence of any criminal wrongdoing—unless verbally advocating violence against police constitutes a crime.”

HEY, HERE’S A LICENSED GUN DEALER IN D.C.

JAMES TARANTO: “We hope they both lose. But actually, Greenwald has a good point at Olbermann’s expense. . . . In our view, Greenwald is wrong. But he is consistent. Olbermann, on the other hand, rails against ‘fascism,’ then yields to it in the name of political expediency. Obama does the same thing in a more soothing manner.”

Plus this: “The Keith Olbermanns of the media world outnumber the Glenn Greenwalds, so when an Obama administration curtails civil liberties (justifiably or not), the outcry will be far more muted than it is now. If civil liberties are your top concern, then, you better vote for John McCain.”

BITES FROM THE APPLE: A roundup of Apple Computer and iPhone news.

JUSTICE SCALIA’S pro-women’s rights position.

A HATFILL WIN: “The DOJ has agreed to a multimillion-dollar settlement with former Army scientist Steven Hatfill, whom the government called a ‘person of interest’ in the 2001 anthrax attacks.”

HEH: “OBAMA CLARIFIES POSITION. Is that becoming a familiar headline, or what? I hope someone is compiling them all.”

MCCLATCHY: Is Obama Turning Out to be Just Another Politician?

HEH: “What is wrong with the British? Islamists regularly demonstrate in the street promising to behead Jews, Christians and other infidels. No foul, no crime. A man whistles at a girl, it’s jail time.” It’s just a question of who they’re afraid of, and who they’re not.

WILMETTE, ILLINOIS suspends its handgun ban in response to Heller.

CANADIAN KANGAROO COURT UPDATE: “Human Rights” complaint against Mark Steyn dropped.

But beware: “They know that in going after high profile targets they’ve bitten off more than they can chew — any action against them would likely stir political action to do away with the commisions altogether. If they drop the complaint against Steyn, the political pressure will simply go away and they’re free to continue zealously violating the rights of lesser known individuals and organizations.”

DAVID BERNSTEIN:

The Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, upholding the Second Amendment right of individuals to own firearms, should finally lay to rest the widespread myth that the defining difference between liberal and conservative justices is that the former support “individual rights” and “civil liberties,” while the latter routinely defer to government assertions of authority. The Heller dissent presents the remarkable spectacle of four liberal Supreme Court justices tying themselves into an intellectual knot to narrow the protections the Bill of Rights provides. Or perhaps it’s not as remarkable as we’ve been led to think.

And making gross errors of fact in the process of the knot-tying.

MORE ON THE JIM COOPER STORY, here and here.

I’VE MENTIONED THE BIG ANTI-AGING CONFERENCE AT UCLA THIS WEEK BEFORE, but now it’s underway. Here’s a piece in Wired, focusing on researcher Aubrey de Grey.

COOL: Just days after discovering ice on Mars, scientists stumble upon morning dew.

CAR LUST: The Vauxhall VX220 Turbo. “The VX220 is a lightweight giant-killer for both the road and the track, meant to embarrass much more expensive Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Porsches.”

RICK MORAN: House GOP Retiring Themselves Into a Permanent Minority.

FOR WHEN CARBON FOOTPRINTS DON’T MATTER: Test-Driving the 2009 Bentley Flying Spur.

MEGAN MCARDLE:

Now the gun controllers pour out of the woodwork to claim that you’re more likely to kill yourself or a family member with a gun than a criminal.

Some of the people deploying this statistic really ought to know better.

Some of them do know better, and deploy it anyway. Some related thoughts from Jim Lindgren. “That the New England Journal of Medicine would publish a time-series article that did not account for population changes over roughly a two-decade period is embarrassing, but then peer review seems to suffer when gun control articles are involved.” Plus, a Bellesiles story.

BOB ZUBRIN: The Saving Grace in McCain’s Energy Policy. “Amidst a pile of campaign nonsense, John McCain just set forth one policy that could save the nation.”

CHICAGO TRIBUNE: Court gun ruling has Chicago thinking it’s next. (Via NewsAlert).

RANDY BARNETT: So what gun regulations are reasonable?