It looks like somebody in the Republican Bush Administration decided Secretary of The Interior Gayle Norton needed to spend more time with her family. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Especially in the wake of the on-gonig investigation into the shady dealings of lobbyist Jack Abramof. Yeah, the guy that funneled money from Indian tribes, and gaming casinos, into all kinds of shady deals and illegal campaign contributions and the like. See, Gayle Norton, being Secretary of the Interior, is in effect over the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is supposed to see to the welfare of the various tribes. So whether she herself is guilty of any wrongdoing or not, or regardless even if she knew about it, it happenned on her watch, in fact, you might say, right under her nose. And so, despite what reasons she might have given as to the reason for her departure from the cabinet post she has held from the beginning of Bush’s first term in office, it seems likely that the Abramof fiasco has sudenly turned her into a liability, to the Department, and more importantly, to Bush, who still denies even more than a passing familiarity to Abramof, if that.
So, my guess is she had to go, before she was faced with a court order to turn over any documents which might now be helpfully shuffled into a bureaucratic labrynthe by her successor, who will of course be “unaware” as to their significance. It’s a longshot strategy, to be sure, but one that might save Ms. Norton possible jail time, and Bush further embarrassment.
However it all turns out, she will not be missed, certainly not by those of us who care for the environment of the world in which we all must live, however tentatively thanks to the likes of her. In fact, I would submit that she is probably the worse Secretary of the Interior in the last half century-and that is saying something.
But what is truly profound is that, taking the entirety of past Interior Secretaries in the context of the times in which they lived, she might well arguably be the worse of the bunch.
