FOXNews:

House Republicans are going to call for a special counsel to determine whether Attorney General Holder perjured himself during his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Operation Fast and Furious, Fox News has learned.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, is sending a letter to President Obama arguing that Holder cannot investigate himself and will request a probe by a special counsel.

The question is whether Holder committed perjury during a Judiciary Committee hearing in May. […]

[…] a newly discovered memo dated July 2010 shows Michael Walther, director of the National Drug Intelligence Center, told Holder that straw buyers in the Fast and Furious operation “are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to the Mexican drug trafficking cartels.”

In response to the Monday release of that and other documents, the Justice Department said Holder was confused by the question, and that he was answering about when he first learned of the “troubling tactics” of the program, not the name of it.

But House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., told Fox News on Tuesday morning that Holder saying he didn’t understand the question rather than he didn’t know of the program is not a successful defense to perjury.

True enough. Justice probably should have gone with the “Michael Jackson’s doctor illegally drugged me, and I’m lucky even to be alive!” defense. Which at least sounds plausible.

Oh. And just to get this out of the way? Sheila Jackson Lee wants to know what it is about AG Holder that makes him a target of a special investigator when other AGs before him were not. Read between the lines, people.