Alberto Gonzales and Larry Sanders

Well, I watched a tiny bit of US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's testimony before the Senate yesterday.

I must admit to being disappointed that he was allowed to walk away from the thing looking like an incompetent and a liar, as opposed to being a deliberate liar, covering up his partisan manipulation of the Justice Department.

When Gonzales repeatedly would say "look at the documents," "if you look at the documents," "if you look at the evidence," ... etc., etc., ... the Senators should have said "Which documents?" They should have said: "You've had over a month to prepare for this, what documents are you referring to?"

This was especially the case with the Carol Lam case. Lam was the US attorney who brought in some big convictions of Republican politicians. It's claimed by Gonzales and crew that she was fired for not pursuing illegal immigration cases diligently enough. But Lam was never told she had to improve her record on pursuing such cases. Gonzales is hanging his dubious claim on the existence of a couple of pieces of correspondence about Lam and illegal immigration, one of which only says that since she's in a border state (California), immigration concerns can be used as an excuse to fire her and any other attorneys from border states.

Gonzales should have been hammered at far greater length on this one. As it was, he still looked like a lying idiot, but the glaring inconsistencies weren't pursued.

In other news, a compilation DVD of the great Larry Sanders Show is coming out. Apparently Gary Shandling isn't such a happy guy now. Oh well, I'm sure things will turn around.