Waxman Drops A Baseball Bomb

In a packed House hearing room this morning, former Sen. George Mitchell (D-Maine), author of the Mitchell Report, testified in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the role of steroids in professional baseball. And during the opening statements, generally a snoozer, the committee chairman, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), dropped a bomb.

Waxman announced that he and Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, the ranking Republican, were asking the Justice Department to investigate whether former Baltimore Oriole shortstop Miguel Tejada lied in his earlier testimony to the committee. Tejada is now a member of the Houston Astros.

In this testimony, Tejada had said he never used illegal performance enhancing drugs and had no knowledge of other players doing it, either.

The Mitchell Report , Waxman noted, "directly contradicts key elements of Mr. Tejada's testimony."

Wasting no time, Waxman and Davis dispatched a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey urging a criminal probe of the one-time American League MVP.

- Aoife McCarthy