Ex-Sec. Andrus to REI’s Sally Jewell: Think big!!!

The former interior secretary who masterminded preservation of 103 million acres in Alaska has a message for REI CEO Sally Jewell, just nominated to become President Obama’s new interior secretary: Think big, and start here in the Pacific Northwest. Ex-Secretary Cecil Andrus, a former Idaho governor, would start in Washington’s San Juan Islands and Idaho’s majestic White Cloud mountains, both proposed for national monument status. “I would prefer that Congress pass legislation,” Andrus said. “If Congress won’t do it legislatively, let the president of the United States do it with the Antiquities Act and designate these places as national monuments. He doesn’t have a damned thing to lose.” New national monuments would, in Andrus’ opinion, be “another gold star” in Obama’s presidential legacy, just as Theodore Roosevelt is remembered more than a century later for creating national monuments that protected the Grand Canyon and Washington’s Olympic Mountains. (Both later became great national parks.) “The interior secretary, the White House, should put out the word to Congress: Pass the legislation immediately, or we will use the Antiquities Act,” Andrus said...more

No, what he is really saying is "Don't think!!  Ignore democracy!!  Don't think!!