Is Salazar the New Holder?

Last month, Holder became the first sitting Cabinet member to be held in contempt of Congress. Pushing the administration’s agenda. Not cooperating with committee investigations. Jeopardizing American values and the rule of law. The charges against Holder aren’t unique to the attorney general. It brings to mind the question: Scandal-wise, congressional spotlight-wise, and perhaps soon headline-wise, is Interior Secretary Ken Salazar the new Holder? The Interior Department has become synonymous with evading congressional requests in the investigation of how the Obama administration bent scientific reports to support its drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil spill. The department’s inspector general who was supposed to ensure oversight of that process is even being investigated herself on allegations that she tampered with a probe of the moratorium. In shades of the DOJ, the Interior Department has responded to committee requests for specific documents with blacked-out paragraphs and entire pages of redacted information, all while claiming to have answered the panel’s requests with “nearly 2,000 pages of documents.” And when five witnesses linked to the Gulf drilling moratorium were asked to testify before the Natural Resources Committee this week, the Interior Department refused to confirm that it would make those officials available to Congress despite multiple inquiries from the committee...more