Listening to Anthony Fauci yesterday made me yearn for the days of Merrie Olde England. Back then, as author James Stewart writes in Tangled Webs, “The offender was typically punished by cutting out his tongue, or making him stand with both ears nailed to the pillory.”

Of course, Fauci didn’t lie yesterday; he simply pleaded the Fifth — 111 times in all — in order to avoid being repeatedly exposed for all his earlier lies.

In his opening statement, Fauci said he’d refrain from answering questions because his attorneys advised him not to. “It pains me to do so,” he lied, “because of the respect that I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress.”

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley opted to expose the absurdity of Fauci’s cowardice: “Well,” he began, “nothing says ‘honesty’ like taking the Fifth, huh Doc? Let’s try something: What day of the week is it today?” And then: “What color tie are you wearing?” And then: “What color is the carpet in front of you?”

To each of these questions, Fauci replied, “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.”

But while Joe Biden’s dubious 11th-hour autopen pardon and Fauci’s own invocation of the Fifth Amendment may have saved him from immediate legal jeopardy and denied the American people the right to judge him in a court of law, neither of these barricades can deny Fauci his day in the court of public opinion. And so, just as O.J. Simpson spent his last days on earth looking for the real killers, so too will Anthony Fauci go to his grave searching for Patient Zero in that Wuhan wet market rather than in that chocolatey good biosafety level 4 super lab.

Indeed, I’m not sure how Fox News firebrand Laura Ingraham scored that particular ticket to yesterday’s hearing, but she was positioned perfectly over Fauci’s left shoulder throughout, and she’d occasionally let slip a much-deserved look of disgust.

But ancient Roman law’s perjurii poena divina, exitium; humana, dedecus isn’t enough, is it? It isn’t enough that this inveterate little liar be “punished by heaven with perdition, and by man with disgrace,” is it?

Sadly, we’ve become a nation of liars. We haven’t heeded Thomas Jefferson’s timeless warning that there is “no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual.”

Perhaps even more sadly, though, we’ve become a nation of unaccountable liars. Think about it: When was the last time an Anthony Fauci, or a James Comey, or a John Brennan, or a Chris Wray, or an Alejandro Mayorkas was held accountable for the demonstrable lies he told before Congress? These days, one witness after another merely farts in the general direction of his congressional inquisitors.

Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno seemed to understand this, and he tried a different line of questioning with Fauci: “Do you feel like you’re in deep s**t?” he asked.

Again came Fauci’s scripted response, but Moreno’s question bears a bit of additional unpacking. Because the argument being made by Republican senators is that the Autopen’s pardon only covers potential federal crimes, not state crimes, and it only covers Fauci’s actions up through January 20, 2025, Joe Biden’s last day in office.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who has dogged Fauci from the onset of the pandemic, said there may yet be federal charges over Fauci’s refusal to answer questions.

“I don’t think this has ever been truly and fully adjudicated,” he said. “There aren’t that many people with pardons who have come before a congressional committee and refuse to testify. A court ultimately would have to determine: Does the Fifth Amendment apply to someone who already has a pardon?”

Paul has said his Homeland Security Committee will hold a vote next week on whether to recommend holding Fauci in contempt. As CBS News reports, “If the majority-GOP committee votes in favor, the matter would head to the full Senate for a vote. Final adoption of that measure would require a simple majority, but ending debate might need 60 votes, which would require some Democrats to vote in favor.”

Once again, the 60-vote Senate threshold looks like an insurmountable obstacle. But perhaps the states can take a shot at Fauci. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced yesterday that his office is launching an investigation into the Bad Doctor. We’ll see if anything comes of it.

But to those who think yesterday’s proceedings were purely performative and that this long-awaited grilling didn’t really accomplish anything, think again. Republican senators got a chance to enter a lot of matters into the record — matters of fact that Fauci had long tried to hide or deny.

What we didn’t get, of course, was an apology from Fauci for his role in a pandemic that cost a million Americans their lives and wrecked the lives of countless others. He took every side of every issue — from masking, to social distancing, to locking down schools and businesses and whole cities and states, to the effectiveness of the vaccine itself — and then denied ever having done it.

As Stewart concludes in his book, “Lying under oath that goes unproven and unpunished breeds a cynicism that undermines the foundations of any society that aspires to fair play and the rule of law. It undermines civilization itself.”

He’s right. If we don’t start holding liars accountable, our nation will continue to unravel. I mean, at least Bill Clinton got impeached, and at least he got disbarred for lying and for suborning perjury.

If Anthony Fauci’s punishment is nothing more than the opprobrium that comes from taking the Fifth, it’ll be utterly unsatisfactory — but not at all surprising.