Congress began its public examination of the Mitchell Report into baseball's steroids era by calling Tuesday for the Justice Department to look into whether former AL MVP Miguel Tejada lied to committee staffers when questioned in connection to the Rafael Palmeiro perjury case in 2005. At a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing in the same wood-paneled room where Palmeiro, Mark McGwire, and others testified three years ago, congressmen mixed criticism of baseball and its players with praise for Commissioner Bud Selig and union leader Donald Fehr for progress on the sport's drug-testing program. "The illegal use of steroids and performance-enhancing drugs was pervasive for more than a decade; Major League Baseball was slow and ineffective in responding to the scandal; and the use of human growth hormone has been rising," said committee chairman Henry Waxman, a California Democrat.