Why should we expect that ANY "Independent" Counsel selected by Eric Holder will be anything other than another instrument of cover-up?

Lamar Smith has written President Obama a letter.

The "reasonable" New York Times, which has largely ignored the Gunwalker Scandal, reports:

Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to President Obama asking him to appoint a special counsel to investigate whether Mr. Holder committed perjury in testimony about the investigation, known as Operation Fast and Furious, at a hearing in May.

Now Lamar knows, as does Congressman Issa and Senator Grassley, that any DOJ-centered "independent" investigation of Gunwalker is going to do three things:

1. Delay the search for the truth. The DOJ Office of Inspector General's "investigation" is a poorly disguised delaying tactic of the cover-up. Why should we expect that any other DOJ-centered investigation would be anything other than the black hole that the OIG "investigation" is? And, mindful of the truism that personnel is policy, where will such an "independent counsel" get his or her staffers? Why from the DOJ "professional" staff of course, who are supposed by "non-political." I've got some ocean-front condos in Winston County, Alabama, to sell you if you believe that one.

2. Hamstring any further Congressional investigations by his own or other committees looking into the foreign policy or other executive branch issues raised by the Gunwalker Plot. The "independent" counsel will insist upon it.

3. Get Lamar and other reluctant GOP "leadership" old bulls off the hook politically, especially as it applies to the White House and State Department links to the Gunwalker Scandal. Recall that the Issa Committee has been reluctant to take on either the White House or the State Department in their investigations so far. One argument is made that this is necessary to slowly build a DOJ-centered case because White House spinmeisters will leap on any over-reach, decrying it as a politically inspired "rush to judgment." Another is that they are being too cute by half, dragging the investigation out long enough to cause maximum damage to the re-election chances of Barack Obama. The introduction of a DOJ-centered "independent" counsel, however, could wreck their timing and put off any reckoning with the Gunwalker conspirators until after the election -- if there IS any reckoning to be expected from such a hopelessly compromised effort.

One clue that the GOP leadership lacks the taste for aggressive investigation of this scandal is the fact that, long after there has been evidence that this was a much larger program involving other agencies (and therefore requiring a "guiding hand" from the White House) THERE HAVE BEEN NO OTHER COMMITTEES LOOKING INTO THIS SCANDAL. No dragging Janet Napolitano before them under oath and demanding answers, no Hillary Clinton, no heads of the FBI, DEA, ICE or Border Patrol. Nothing.

If they had, one might excuse them the standard request for a DOJ-centered special prosecutor. Then the move would look less like just another maneuver by one party of the permanent governing class to give the other a little breather so as not to upset the whole apple-cart.

As then Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson once famously told a Senator who was trying to amend one of his carely-crafted bills, "Don't spit in the soup, we've all got to eat."

There is a mechanism by which the House can conduct its own special investigation utilizing the House Sergeant at Arms office. Gun Owners of America has suggested this to congressional leaders and they have, to date, ignored it.

Absent any other aggressive committee investigations on the gamut of issues raised by Gunwalker and other agencies, and absent a House-centered special investigation, this letter from Lamar Smith looks like exactly what it is: an invitation to Barack Obama to get a little breathing room on the Gunwalker Scandal and to prolong the cover-up.

Before Smith and the GOP leadership hands over responsibility for investigating this scandal to the same people who perpetrated it, they ought to make a little bigger show of using the power that they have. That they haven't is a measure of how much contempt they have for the folks who put them in the majority in the House.

They don't think you're smart enough to spot the ruse, and they surely don't think they'll pay a political price for it.