"I'm afraid I'm not an astronomer, Congressman."

BP's chief copped a lucky break yesterday when Congressman Joe Barton lost it over America being mean to the oil company.

This WaPo excerpt pretty much sums up the hearing:

"I'm not a cement engineer, I'm afraid," he said when asked about the well casing. "I'm not an oceanographic scientist," he said when asked about the oil plumes. "I'm not a drilling engineer or a technically qualified engineer," he replied when pressed further for answers.

By the end, the Q&A had become little more than a collection of "I don'ts" (55 mentions), "I'm nots" (42), "I can'ts" (28) and scores more "I wasn'ts," "I haven'ts" and the like.

Finally, about five hours after the hearing began, Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) came up with a question Hayward could answer. "Is today Thursday?" the congressman asked.