The nomination of Ken Salazar may trouble some environmentalists but not this one. At least not so far. I think he may turn out to have been a very canny choice. What is troubling is that it will open up a Democratic Senate seat in a couple of years. Unless Salazar's replacement (said to be his brother) gets his grips on the job and manages to hold onto it. But it makes me nervous.
Update: The Times has a grim editorial about the job Salazar is taking on. The Interior Department has been decimated by the Bush administration.
"Mr. Salazar’s most urgent task will be to remove the influence of politics and ideology from decisions that are best left to science.
"Just as Mr. Salazar’s name was surfacing for the job, Earl Devaney, currently the department’s inspector general, reported to Congress that on 15 separate occasions the department’s political appointees had weakened protections for endangered species against the advice of the agency’s scientists, whose work they either ignored or distorted."
