The Washington Times says it has damning new information about the relationship between AIG and Senator Chris Dodd:

As Democrats prepared to take control of Congress after the 2006 elections, a top boss at the insurance giant American International Group Inc. told colleagues that Sen. Christopher J. Dodd was seeking re-election donations and he implored company executives and their spouses to give.



I understand why this provocative, but I'm not sure why it's important. Sure, you can be angry about the influence corporations wield in American elections (Ralph Nader has made a second career out of it). But that anger shouldn't apply uniquely to Chris Dodd. There is nothing illegal about soliciting individual campaign donations. And, more importantly, there is no evidence that Dodd did anything in exchange for these campaign donations.



Or is there? The Washington Times says there is evidence that Dodd helped AIG: "He acknowledged that he slipped a provision into legislation in February that authorized the bonuses, but said the Treasury Department asked him to do it."

But I can't get myself worked up about this, for three reasons. First, the provision is question didn't "authorize" the AIG bonuses, and it's lazy phrasing to say it did. The provision in question didn't "authorize" anything. And it certainly didn't apply uniquely to AIG. The provision just limited the compensation restrictions in the stimulus bill to contracts finalized after February 11 2009. (And that date wasn't chosen because it was convenient for the fat cats at AIG -- it just happened to be the date that Congress finished its negotiations on the stimulus.) If there's evidence that this was inserted to protect AIG, I haven't seen it.