Some people scratched their heads when oil executives testified before Congress last week.  The custom is that people who testify — from tobacco executive to Raphael Palmiero — take an oath.  For some reason, Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), the chair of the Senate Energy Committee, steadfastly refused to have the oil executives take an oath.

Matt Yglesius discovers a possible reason:

Meanwhile, this is in many ways the craziest scandal yet. Documents leaked to The Washington Post reveal that some of the secret meetings of the Cheney energy task force were attended by . . . people from oil companies. Not exactly the surprise of the year. The thing of it is, though, that just last week Frank Lautenberg had a bunch of oil company executives in a committee hearing and asked if their companies met with the task force and . . . they all said no.

Gotcha.