No one laid a glove on Apple CEO Tim Cook, not even the subcommittee's "hostile chairman," in his appearance before the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to explain the company's offshore tax practices, according to "CNNMoney" (http://tinyurl.com/lbfvd5x).

Cook's testimony was "calm and precise," and "the senators, for their part, were mostly respectful -- and on occasion fawning," the article adds.

"Claire McCaskill (Dem., Mo.) couldn't say often enough how much she loved Apple," notes "CNNMoney. "Ron Johnson (Rep., Wisc.) praised the company's tax minimization strategies as shareholder friendly. Rob Portman (Rep., Ohio) only wanted to talk about his tax reform proposals. Rand Paul (Rep., Ken.) thought the committee owed Apple an apology. John McCain (Rep., Ariz.), after a bout of tax dodging rhetoric, wanted to know why his iPhone was constantly updating its apps."

The "hostile chairman," Carol Levin (Dem., Mich.) spent the last long minutes of Apple's appearance before the subcommittee repeating\two talking points with which Tim Cook clearly disagreed (that the company had "shifted" its crown jewels to entities that paid "no taxes"), but to which Apple's CEO was never given a chance to respond, the article adds.