WATCHDOGS WITHOUT BITE: “After a 14-month investigation, the Senate ethics committee decided it was OK that corrupt Sen. Christopher Dodd took sweetheart mortgages from Countrywide Financial, despite his role as a congressional overseer of the nation’s lenders. The committee accepted his implausible explanations because the ethics code is a massive gray area, intentionally so. The code mostly exists to give the public the impression senators are serious about weeding out corruption. They are not.”