After 235 days, U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd is still asking the people of Connecticut to take his word for it on the two sweetheart mortgage deals he got from a rogue sub prime mortgage lender, Countrywide Financial. In an attempt to buy time and change the subject, Sen. Dodd Monday used the cover of Governor Jodi Rell’s budget address to the state tonight and the retreat of General Dick Blumenthal to “release” his mortgage documents for public inspection.

Actually, it was a sort of “catch and release” – since Dodd wouldn’t allow the documents to be copied and did little to get to the underlying issue of how he and his wife, Jackie Klegg, came upon $753,000 in mortgage financing through a program set aside for Washington, D.C.  big wigs. Dodd has spent at least $70,000 to a big-time law firm, Perkins Coie, who in turn hired another firm, Cross-Check Compliance, LLC to tell us that everything Dodd did was on the up and up. So this “independent” firm is a paid subcontractor of Dodd’s relection campaign – hardly a transparent action.

It will take some time to review what they did, but as a practical matter, what the Dodd’s did release was a scrubbed work sheet as they saw it.  And their assertion that the way to put this behind them was to “refinance” again leaves little doubt why Dodd has been equally clueless about the collapse of the banking industry.

Even if we were to believe everything Sen. Dodd told us, why doesn’t he post these documents on his website and redact anything that can be seen as truly personal?  And how does all of this jibe with the statements of Robert Feinberg, the Countrywide Financial loan officer, who says he has written proof the Dodd’s knew about their special deal and were actively negotiating for a better one? Feinberg is cooperating with federal authorities in California who are putting Countrywide under the microscope.

Dodd’s written statement is classic Chris Dodd, long on generalities and short of introspection.

“I regret having ever done business with Countrywide,” Dodd said, in what may become the quote of the year. Now we get it, Sen. Dodd is the victim here.