Living at the Ritz…. and other swanky places in DC

Michael Kinsley, the left-leaning columnist for Politico, confesses this morning:  "I live in the same apartment building in Washington as Harry Reid."

"Although I’ve never actually spotted Reid in the lobby, I did once see Michael Jordan, who used to live there, which is almost as exciting," Kinsley writes. "There’s nothing particularly spectacular about this building. But I won’t deny that it’s very, very nice. And so what?"

Kinsley writes Republicans should have thought twice about making a big deal about Reid's condo, which has one bedroom and two bathrooms and which was purchased for $750,000 in 2001 and is now valued at $1.02 million. 

"Because it turns out that Mitch McConnell (the Senate minority leader from Kentucky) 'live[s] in a Capitol Hill three-bedroom with carriage house'" Kinsley writes.  Zillow.com, a real estate website,  "estimates the value of McConnell’s hoof-à-terre at $1,142,000, which is about $80,000 more than Reid’s Bedroom of Shame."

Another Republican leader, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, owns a townhouse in Georgetown, worth more than $2 million, Kinsley writes. Sen. Thad Cochran. R-Miss., lives in a $1.3 million place on Capitol Hill and Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., also has a Hill home worth a bit over $1 million, he wrote.

"Why does any of this matter?" Kinsley writes. "It doesn’t, but Angle and the Republicans brought it all up."