Make no mistake, I think he's not my lawyer. I think he's George W. Bush's lawyer, and as such ought not to be Attorney General. The President is entitled to have a legal staff, but that's not the Attorney General's role. The AG is supposed to work for the citizens.

And he shouldn't be rehearsing testimony on my nickel. Defense of his job is personal, and should be done on personal time.

Yet: It's common practice, and considered professionally sound, to rehearse witnesses about to give testimony before a court or other legal gathering. It's done not so much because the witness is presumed not to know the truth, but because the legal process is adversarial, and the witness may become rattled or confused if confronting an unfriendly questioner.

If the witness is rehearsed, it only means that a lawyer, or team of lawyers, will ask a wide array of questions of the witness, some of which demand an excessively detailed memory of events, or are intended to elicit a confused or misleading answer. If the witness hears questions like this for the first time while giving testimony under oath, the truth that the witness knows may be buried under confusion, nervousness or anger. Rehearsal is not intended to suborn perjury, but to arm the witness against his or her own emotional response to certain lines or styles of questioning.

As an officer of the court, if Mr. Gonzales is rehearsing his testimony with the intent of telling convincing lies, he is already guilty of conspiracy to commit perjury, as are those helping him. His assistants are also guilty of witness tampering. These are felonies, which would further get any lawyer involved disbarred. He had better be rehearsing the truth.