"The highest standards regarding ethics"

I've just spent three hours reading the Gonzales hearing transcripts. Good god--and they called our guy a waffler. In any case, though I suspect many of you may have watched the hearings, highlights will follow tomorrow because I can't help myself. In the meantime, this comment from Gonzales seemed worth calling out just for the sheer brash preposterousness of the statement:

Senator, I hope as attorney general that I would have and would commit to this committee to have the highest standards regarding ethics. Let me just also say that I do very much understand that there is a difference in the position of counsel to the president and as attorney general of the United States. As counselor to the president, my primary focus is on providing counsel to the White House and to the White House staff and the president. I have a very limited staff. The staff doesn't have the expertise or the experience in a great many substantive legal issues. All those are decided in the Department of Justice. I do have a client who has an agenda, and part of my role as counselor is to provide advice so that the president can achieve that agenda lawfully. It's a much different situation as attorney general, and I know that. My first allegiance is going to be to the Constitution and the laws of the United States.

You know, I really wish I did believe in god so that I could at least hope for some supernatural force to just smite folks mid-sentence when they say shit like this. The only end to the hearing I would be really happy about involves the nominee being reduced to a smoldering pile of ash.