The morning testimony has ended and they have all gone to lunch. At the beginning of the session Gonzales was warned that he had an extended amount of time to prepare for todays testimony and that the phrase "I don't recall" would not be tolerated as a response. Gonzales has answered "I don't recall" more than 55 times this morning. When he was told not to give meandering responses that do not answer the question he went ahead and did that anyway. He gave his first "I don't recall" only minutes into his testimony!

He has attempted to elude giving an answer to every direct question asked of him so far. He is basically publicly going up in flames and providing every reason under the sun to expect he will soon resign his post.

Some general highlights (or lowlights depending on your perspective) to me so far:

1. Based on his testimony this morning Gonzales claims to have no knowledge of how or why these US Attorneys were fired. He made his decision purely based, according to him, on the findings of Kyle Sampson and trusted his findings and the findings of his coworkers to be adequate to fire them.

2. A key meeting that took place on 11/27/06 has completely been erased from Alberto's mind. He can't recall the meeting ever taking place but does know it did because others have testified about the meeting and according to his records the meeting happened, he was there, and his record shows who was there. It's amazing that Gonzales clearly remembers phone calls and conversations that took place well before and shortly after this meeting, including just casual conversations but this meeting is missing from his memory. How convenient.

3. In a very amusing exchange about Carol Lam, Gonzales claimed that Lam was "acutely aware" of concerns the Justice Department had with her with regards to prosecuting immigration cases. When confronted with the facts that Lam has said she was never talked to about this issue and that a 2006 report on immigration cases prosecuted by her office showed her record outstanding and that her office had already prosecuted almost as many cases in the first two quarters as they did the entire previous year...Gonzales then said she had been made aware of issues by members of Congress! The really funny part about this was she was made aware in a letter signed by Randy "Duke" Cunningham (now in jail) and California Congressman Jerry Lewis both of whom at the time of their letter were subjects of an ongoing investigation by Ms. Lam's office and who certainly were hoping she would focus her attention elsewhere...the dishonesty by Gonzales here is obscene. When asked if it was always the DOJ's policy to have Congressmen do the DOJ's job ol' Al basically had nothing to say.

With each word he utters it becomes more and more clear that there is something to hide. I bet Al is really enjoying his lunch.