During the news conference this morning, Obama announced that Colorado Senator Ken Salazar is the guy to do the overhaul.
Obama said Salazar understands natural resources and can balance energy needs and conservation. Over the last 8 years, the interior department has been "deeply troubled," Obama said. The interior has been seen as an appendage to commercial interests, he said.
The department is going to be proactive, talking to farmers and ranchers and it will be at the cutting edge of environmental policy. The secretary is important to overall energy discussions, he said.
"If there is going to be a debate about oil shale, I want Ken at the table." If we're debating wind power, Salazar needs to be at the table.
"I also wants an interior department, very frankly, that cleans up it's act."
On Blago, again, he told reporters that by next week they'd have the answers to all their questions. He also announced former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture. Video below
NYT on the messy interior:
No cabinet post is as critical to the integrity of the nation’s parks, its open spaces and its animal species. Mr. Obama, and his environmental adviser in chief, Carol Browner, must be prepared to offer Mr. Salazar full support, especially in fending off the ranchers and the oil, gas, mining and other special interests who have always found the Interior Department to be a soft target, never more so than in the Bush administration.
Mr. Salazar’s most urgent task will be to remove the influence of politics and ideology from decisions that are best left to science.
Just as Mr. Salazar’s name was surfacing for the job, Earl Devaney, currently the department’s inspector general, reported to Congress that on 15 separate occasions the department’s political appointees had weakened protections for endangered species against the advice of the agency’s scientists, whose work they either ignored or distorted.
This sort of meddling has become standard operating procedure. Julie MacDonald, a former deputy assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks, resigned last year after an earlier report found that she had run roughshod over agency scientists and violated federal rules by giving internal documents to industry lobbyists.
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