The rats are starting to leave the ship...

I just love how this AP article begins....

WASHINGTON - Interior Secretary Gale Norton resigned Friday after five years in
President Bush's Cabinet and at a time when her agency is part of a lobbying scandal over Indian gaming licenses.

Nice lead, but now here comes the need for deconstruction

In a letter to Bush, Norton said the resignation would be effective at the end of March.
"Now I feel it is time for me to leave this mountain you gave me to climb, catch my breath, then set my sights on new goals to achieve in the private sector," she said in the two-page resignation letter.
Norton, who turns 52 on Saturday, said she and her husband "hope to end up closer to the mountains we love in the West."

Translation: I put my time in scuttling regulations and eviscerating environmental policy. Now is a good time to get out and start calling in my IOUs. Let's start with a really good gig consulting for a mining, logging or drilling operation out west. And then after the anti-lobbying period ends, I'll go back to Washington and represent the very same people I was supposed to be regulating.

A former Colorado attorney general, Norton guided the Bush administration's initiative to open Western government lands to more oil and gas drilling.
As one of the architects of Bush's energy policy, she eased regulations to speed approval of drilling permits, particularly in New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming's Powder River Basin.
She also was the administration's biggest advocate for opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on Alaska's North Slope to oil drilling

Now remember this is the energy policy that was drafted hand in hand with the very companies to be impacted -- without ANY public input.

The first woman ever to head the Interior Department, Norton was a protege of James Watt, the controversial interior secretary during President
Ronald Reagan's first term in office. Watt was forced to resign after characterizing a coal commission in terms that were viewed by some as a slur.


By the way, people forget that James Watt was also a famous christian wingnut who believed that the (then) coming millenium signaled the rapture, ameggedon, and the final judgement, and therefore it was actually OK to rape the environment and allow special business interests carte blanche to befoul public lands (at pennies on the dollar).

snip to....

In 1996 she sought the Republican Senate nomination in Colorado but was defeated by Wayne Allard, who now holds the seat. Later she co-founded the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, a group that has become embroiled in the Abramoff lobbying scandal.
Abramoff pleaded guilty in January to federal felony charges related to congressional influence peddling and defrauding Indian tribes in Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas of millions of dollars.
The tribes were either seeking casino licenses or trying to prevent other tribes from opening competing casinos, and Abramoff on occasion represented both sides on the same issue, charging each hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. The Interior Department oversees Indian affairs, including tribes' gaming activities.
In e-mail exchanges that have been made public since his plea, Abramoff mentioned having an inside track at the department, and his clients donated heavily to the Republican environmental advocacy group Norton helped establish.

Perhaps there is a fly in the ointment. Can we clone Patrick Fitzgerald and send him over to Interior?

Norton met Abramoff in her office at least once and attended a dinner at which he was present, but aides have described the meetings as nonsubstantive.
Much of Norton's work at Interior was satisfying demands from governors and local officials in the West to have more of a role in how the federal government's massive land holdings are used and preserved.
The Interior Department oversees the government's ownership of one-fifth of the nation's land. Norton led the Bush administration's push for "cooperative conservation" — shifting more of the responsibility for land management and recovery of endangered species to states and local communities.
Norton also presided over the nation's park system and oversaw offshore oil and gas leases.
"There never will be a perfect time to leave," Norton said in her resignation letter to Bush. "There is always more work to do.

And more money to be made while the gettin's good.

Good riddance.