Watching the attorney general of these United States - Alberto "Fredo" Gonzales - testify before a Senate committee brings one question to mind: Did he skip that semester in law school where they teach lawyers how to lie?

He must have because he is painfully inept at it.

It's either that, or we should all be extremely proud of our special attorney general. It has to be the first time in the history of this great land that such a developmentally disabled person has risen so high in service to our democracy.

Kind of brings a tear to your eye.

The hearing itself was hard to watch - I caught the highlights later - as Fredo sat there, looking very pathetic, kind of like a kid called into the principal's office to explain just what he was doing in the cafeteria with that trombone and German shepherd and his explanation is something like, "What's a cafeteria?"

It was hard not to feel sorry for Fredo, being berated by a bunch of senators merely because he either couldn't answer their questions, or couldn't remember the answers, or didn't know what they were talking about, or believed he had somehow stumbled into the wrong hearing, thinking he was supposed to be somewhere, anywhere, else.

They accused him of lying. They accused him of obfuscation. They accused him of all sorts of things, but mostly that, for a person who went to law school, he was a pretty lousy liar.

The best part came when Sen. Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, asked him about some statements

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Fredo had made at a press conference that turned out to be untrue, or were contradicted by the testimony of others, or were contradicted by the testimony of Fredo himself - not surprising since he does that a lot.

Fredo denied lying. He'd never lie.

He told Schumer he "did misspeak."

He "did misspeak." That's completely different.

Fredo told the senator that he "went back and clarified it with a reporter."

Schumer asked him, "Which reporter?"

And Fredo, after checking with his minions, said, "Dan Eggen, at the Washington Post, two days later."

Schumer asked, a couple of times, what exactly did he clarify? And Fredo either didn't want to say or he couldn't remember or something like that.

Finally, Fredo, after much prodding, said, "I clarified my statement to the reporter."

So far so good.

Schumer kept asking questions about what he clarified and what he said and after again consulting with his people, Fredo said, "I didn't speak directly to the reporter."

So how did he clarify his misstatement? Telepathy? Vulcan mind-meld?

Wait. It gets better.

After a few more questions, it became apparent that Fredo's people spoke with the reporter.

So Schumer asks, "What did your spokespeople say to him?"

Let's pause for a moment.

What do you think the answer will be?

Will it be:

A. My spokespeople clarified my statement.

B. My spokespeople set the record straight with a full and honest accounting of the facts.

C. What was the question?

D. None of the above.

It was none of the above.

Fredo's answer?

"I don't know."

Genius.

Let's review.

First, Fredo says he didn't lie, that he "did misspeak," and that he clarified the misstatement with a reporter he named, but that he did so in a manner that didn't require him to speak to the reporter and then he was asked what his people may have said to the reporter to clarify his misstatement and Fredo said, "I don't know."

It defies humor. You can't make up stuff funnier than that. Watching Schumer question Fredo was, in the words of a wise man, like watching someone trying to nail a puddle to the floor.

Of course, during the hearing and afterwards, the senators all said Fredo should just quit, that his credibility is so low that if he were to say the sky was blue, you'd go outside and see that the sky was green, that, for a lawyer, he was woefully inept at lying.

Most everybody, it seems, wants Fredo to quit, but Fredo has pledged to stick it out. He told the Senate committee that the Justice Department is a shambles and is rife with incompetence and idiocy and graduates of Pat Robertson's School of Hair Design and Law and that he has to stick around to fix it.

OK, once again . . .

The Justice Department is a mess. Key people have quit and have been replaced by political hacks. Fredo's mission seemed to be to convert the department into some kind of faith-based arm of the Republican Party. It's under siege from Congress over the political firings of seven or eight U.S. attorneys.

Fredo may or may not be responsible for the mess. It's hard to tell because he can't remember whether he had anything to do with the Justice Department or not. It's amazing that he's able to remember his own name.

And now, Fredo told the senators that he has to stay around to fix all of the problems that he may or may not have caused, or the ones he can't remember causing, or the ones he doesn't know about, or the ones that perhaps he may have something to do with that he can't remember but may have misspoke about and sort of clarified or maybe not because he doesn't know what happened.

Genius.