Alberto Gonzales’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee was a good news / bad news joke, like the one where the doctor says, “The good news is that this report says you still have fifteen days to live. The bad news is that it came in two weeks ago.”

The report on this country came in on March 20, 2003, when U.S. forces invaded Iraq. At that time the prognosis was not good, and by now, when many Americans still haven’t called the doctor to find out what’s up, things are worse than ever.

But first, the good news. Alberto Gonzales is probably not as bad or as crazy a person as our ex AG, John Ashcroft. While Ashcroft is a genuine lock-the-door lunatic, Gonzales is probably just a cruel, hateful person. Like George W. Bush, he seems to be a latent serial killer. Their team specializes in gleefully meting out executions (in Texas) and torture-murders (in Iraq), but that is not a problem for appointees these days in our bastion of Liberty.

The bad news is that Mr. Gonzales is unfit to be Attorney General of the United States. But that’s not even news! We all knew that, didn’t we?

More good news: Arlen Specter and Lindsey Graham spoke out forcefully against the Administration’s penchant for secrecy and its habit of ignoring Senators’ letters and requests for information.

The really scary bad news: Mr. Gonzales is a faithful toady for George W. Bush, plus incompetent and dishonest to boot. He gave so many “I don’t recall” answers that Robert Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, Richard Nixon’s two odious henchmen, would have been proud. After all, both of them were convicted of perjury and went to prison for using the same words (“I don’t recall”) over and over again to the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, later known as the Senate Watergate Committee, in 1973. So the new AG, having almost certainly perjured himself, is already a criminal as well as incompetent, inhumane, and unfit.

But we knew that too.

Mixing this all up together in one big pot, and adding a dollop of historical perspective, you may not be surprised to learn that the Good Ship United States is on a collision course with a black iceberg called totalitarianism.

That was the good news! The bad news is that our Brave Vessel is only carrying enough lifeboats for billionaires and their pet politicians.