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Yahoo founder Jerry Yang is worth about $2.2 billion, according to Forbes magazine. The Internet giant's general counsel, Michael Callahan, received cash and stock options worth about $10 million last year.

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Yesterday, the pair came before Congress to explain why they had paid not one penny to help the family of an innocent Chinese journalist Yahoo had turned over to Beijing's thought police to serve a decade in prison.

It didn't go very well for Yang and Callahan.

"While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies," Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told the corporate titans.

Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) said he saw a "parallel" between Yahoo and companies that helped the Nazis locate Jews to be sent to concentration camps.

"It is repugnant," Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) told the executives. "It would be funny if it weren't so sickening."

Somewhere the late Kenny Boy Lay of Enron is smiling. There's a new corporate villain in town -- and he's quite a Yahoo.

In a scene usually reserved for tobacco executives, big oil bosses and other traditional robber barons, Yang and Callahan sat sullenly through three hours of abuse and offered up weak excuses: "We did not have sufficient information. . . . It's obviously a very complicated issue."

Actually, it's not very complicated. Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist, used his Yahoo e-mail account to forward a Chinese government directive forbidding journalists from covering the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. When the Chinese government asked Yahoo to unmask the account holder, Yahoo did -- and Shi is serving a 10-year prison term.

Worse, Callahan gave a phony story to Congress in 2006, saying that "we had no information" about the case against Shi. Hauled in to testify again yesterday, Callahan claimed that he didn't know all the facts last time and apologized for failing to inform the committee even after learning that his testimony was bogus. Topping it off was Yahoo's failure to help the journalist's family.

"Shi Tao's mother is sitting in the first row right behind you," Lantos told the pair. "I would urge you to beg the forgiveness of the mother whose son is languishing behind bars due to Yahoo's actions." Callahan waited a bit before moving slightly and making a perfunctory nod in the direction of Shi's sobbing mother.

In his opening statement, Callahan made no apology for handing over Shi in response to a "lawful order" from the Chinese.