Interior Department Watch

From the Denver Post today comes word that Bush will again look West for a Norton replacement as head of Interior. Some names are being tossed around, and the most likely seems to be Gov. Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho.

Kempthorne seems to have been in the running for this post for quite some time now. In an article three years ago, Slate Magazine had this to say about Kempthorne:

If it is Kempthorne, Bush will have made a comically anti-environmental choice. During six years in the Senate in the 1990s, Kempthorne scored a "0" on the League of Conservation Voters' legislative scorecards every year except 1993, when Kempthorne scored 6 percent on the basis of one little-remembered vote against funding a rocket booster for the space program that environmentalists judged harmful to the environment. Knight Ridder's Seth Borenstein reported June 23 that in the two years after Kempthorne became governor of Idaho, the state increased toxic emissions by 2 percent—this during a period when the national average declined by 9 percent. The chief of staff for Idaho's Department of Environmental Quality told Borenstein that environmental inspections were at "a bare-bones minimum" aimed only at staying in compliance with a state court order. Kempthorne did battle with EPA Administrator Christie Whitman over an Idaho Superfund cleanup, at one point threatening to evict EPA officials from the state.

There seems to be some speculation that Bush could make an environmentally unpopular, confrontational selection while the Senate is in recess and put a confirmation fight off until 2007. The L.A. Times also has a piece on this today: Norton Legacy: Drilling, Land Sale Plans.
Doing a recess appointment (think John Bolton) would minimize public outcry against an environmentally unfriendly appointee, and enable business to continue as usual at the Dept. of the Interior. Two quotes from the LAT article give a clear picture of what business as usual means:

"She has been an integral part of the most anti-environmental administration we've ever seen," said Elise Jones, executive director of the Colorado Environmental Coalition.

and...

"The Bureau of Land Management has essentially become the bureau of oil and gas development," said Dave Alberswerth, a public lands expert with the Wilderness Society.

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