Double enmity — this afternoon's House hearing on AIG's bonuses was a drama worth of the 1944 classic Double Indemnity, which was also about insurance fraud.

The enmity is coming from the public over the huge bonuses paid to AIG execs despite the huge insuror getting huge bailout money from taxpayers. There was enmity from some members of Congress, but the gallery was full of enmity from commoners, some of whom carried protest signs and placards.

"Signs down!" Kanjorski warned the protesters at the start of the hearing.

When the proceedings finally began, Congressman Paul Kanjorski put the issue squarely in front of AIG's government-appointed CEO, Edward Liddy, at the start.

Kanjorski said Liddy could have taken this action: Don't make the bonus payments. If the recipients want their money, let them sue us.

That's turning the tables on insurance companies, which often dare consumers to sue them — or at least insist — if they want payoffs on their policies.

Liddy's chutzpah was enormous, however. He told the House panel that he was standing up for the sanctity of contracts: "When you owe someone money, pay that money back."

Yes, uh-huh, an insurance company CEO saying that his company will readily pay off on policies, which, after all, are basically contracts, too.

Liddy added, "It was distasteful to have to make these payments." But that didn't pass the smell test. He didn't mention the millions of dollars in bonuses that Liddy himself racked up when he was Allstate's CEO, as I reported earlier today. Those bonuses he received were certainly not "distasteful" to him.

"As a businessman for 37 years, I have seen the good side of capitalism," he told the panel. He didn't get into specifics of that, but he could have been referring to $40 million he raked in from Allstate during the last two years he was CEO of that company.

Meanwhile, Kanjorski's reasoning was smart, and his tone moderately friendly but extremely stern, without the familiar bloviating by the likes of Gary Ackerman earlier in the day.

Kanjorski noted earlier contact with Liddy, in which he asked Liddy to turn over documents and work with his staff on figuring how some way to delay paying the AIG bonuses or not pay them at all. Kanjorski noted that Liddy and AIG staff provided no documents, despite being asked to do so. The congressman pointed out that all he got from Liddy was a letter from a lawyer saying that AIG had to pay the bonuses.

That wasn't good enough for Kanjorski. "I warned you," he told Liddy.

And Kanjorski said he suggested that if the bonus recipients wanted their money, let them sue us — meaning AIG, which means the government, which now owns most of AIG, which means the taxpayers, at least ostensibly.

If the bonus recipients did sue, the matter would wend its way through the courts. Many of them wouldn't sue. And in any case, if AIG in the meantime went belly-up or was split up (as it should be), the recipients either wouldn't get their money or would have to stand in line with other creditors or would wind up (at less cost to taxpayers) settling for less than the full amount of their unjustified bonuses.

Instead, Liddy caved in like a crooked casino operator, paying off his pals with suckers' money — like a mobster's skimming scheme.

Liddy said he has asked the bonus recipients — those who got more than $100,000 — to return at least half their bonuses.

How about a don't ask/do tell policy? Don't ask them to give the money back. Tell them to.