Free Republic

A leading congressional Republican is investigating whether the National Park Service (NPS) committed “scientific misconduct” in its effort to shut down a century-old oyster farm over claims that it threatens the local seal population. Rep. Darrell Issa (R.-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is demanding that the Interior Department turn over certain documents to his panel to determine whether faulty information will close the Drakes Bay Oyster Company (DBOC), which operates in California’s Point Reyes National Seashore. “It has come to my attention that scientific misconduct by National Park Service personnel may be jeopardizing the right...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 (UPI) -- The proposed merger of two federal agencies managing public land and mining is part of a White House effort to wipe out the U.S. coal industry, a critic said. U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar called for the merger of the Bureau of Land Management and the Office of Surface Mining. U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, said he had "serious" concerns about the decision to "suddenly and dramatically" change management of coal mines and BLM lands by U.S. President Barack Obama's administration. "The Obama administration has not made...

The University of Massachusetts Amherst has been awarded a $7.5 million federal grant over five years to lead a consortium of seven universities and host the Northeast Climate Science Center. The climate center is one of eight in the country established by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar since he founded the program in 2009, according to a press release. The center at UMass includes New England and states west to Minnesota and south to Maryland. The money will support federal, state and other agencies by studying the effects of climate change on ecosystems, wildlife, water and other resources in...

The Obama administration is spending $35 million to buy 30,000 acres of private property across the U.S. this year to make permanent homes for mice, fairy shrimp, mussels, prairie bushes and beetles. Those are just some of the 70 critters and plants to benefit from the land purchases in a dozen states as part of the government’s habitat conservation plans for endangered species. “The federal government already owns more land than Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy and Poland combined,” said Rob Gordon, senior adviser for strategic outreach at The Heritage Foundation....The federal government owns more than 600 million...

Since day one of the Obama administration, I’ve chronicled Loathsome Cowboy Ken Salazar’s War on the West, War on Jobs, and War on Science/ Rule of Law as head of the Interior Department. His eco-radical sidekick Carol Browner is gone, yet Salazar remains in place. Federal judge after federal judge has spanked Salazar and Obama’s job-destroying eco-nitwits for lawlessly and fraudulently imposing their junk-science drilling ban . Salazar spearheaded the pulling of scores of oil leases by invoking bogus eco-claims and has presided over an expansive land grab through administrative fiat. Yesterday, yet another federal judge smacked Obama/Salazar and the...

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) -- A judge on Friday threw out Obama administration rules that sought to slow down expedited environmental review of oil and gas drilling on federal land. U.S. District Judge Nancy Freudenthal ruled in favor of a petroleum industry group, the Western Energy Alliance, in its lawsuit against the federal government, including Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- Anti-nuclear activists say they will fight a proposal to create national parks at Los Alamos National Laboratory and two other sites where the world's first nuclear bombs were developed. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar released a study to Congress last week that recommends establishing a national historical park to commemorate the top-secret Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb.

Salazar said more study is needed before finalizing the withdrawal of the million acres of land around the Grand Canyon. A two-year moratorium that would have expired in weeks has been extended until December. Even if no new claims are accepted, mining companies have filed hundreds of claims in the area in recent years

With gas prices soaring, the pressure's on the Obama administration to increase the number of permits for deepwater oil drilling. Right now, just 16% of Likely U.S. Voters have a favorable opinion of the man who'll grant those permits, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, with a scant one percent (1%) who regard him Very Favorably. only 20% of voters have a favorable opinion of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, with two percent (2%) who view him Very Favorably. The former Iowa governor

The Obama administration late Friday appealed a judge's orders directing the Interior Department to act on several Gulf of Mexico deepwater drilling permits. The appeal is the latest salvo in the ongoing fight over the speed with which Interior is – or isn't – letting oil drillers get back to work after last year's BP oil spill. Gulf state lawmakers and the oil industry have accused the department of enacting a "de facto" moratorium against new drilling, while Interior says it needs to ensure safety and environmental protections are in place. Friday's appeal challenges rulings by Judge Martin Feldman of...

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar rallied Everglades restoration workers Friday at a groundbreaking ceremony for a piece of the massive effort in rural Collier County. The ceremony deep in the Picayune Strand State Forest between U.S. 41 and Interstate 75 marked the start of work on a $79 million pump station along the Faka Union Canal. The pump is the largest of three that are part of a plan to return natural water flows to 55,000 acres of the forest where developers once planned a huge subdivision. The restoration also will tear out 260 miles of roads and plug 48 miles...

Salazar: Altered drilling report not intentionalUpdated: Nov 10, 2010 4:08 PM EST WASHINGTON, DC (RNN) - The Obama administration said Wednesday that its decision to implement a moratorium on offshore drilling was influenced by factors separate and apart from a report that some say was altered by the White House, and that the report in question was not an intentional attempt to mislead the public. Nine Republican members of Congress asked the Inspector General's Office to investigate the "30-Day Safety Report to the President," which was used to justify the Obama administration's six-month drilling moratorium. The congressmen complained that the...

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The U.S. Interior Department is taking steps to eliminate conflicts of interest within its various branches in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, announcing Friday it has created a new office to collect billions of dollars in oil and gas revenue. The newly formed Office of Natural Resources Revenue will take over revenue collection from the offshore-drilling regulatory branch, known as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement. That agency formerly oversaw both revenue collection and permit approvals. Last year, the bureau disbursed more than $10.6 billion of revenue to the U.S. Treasury,...

National Park Service spokesman Bill Line has lashed out at conservative critics of the trashing of the National Mall by attendees of the leftist One Nation Working Together rally held at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. on Saturday.The Park Service is part of the Interior Department which is headed up by Obama appointee, former U.S. Senator Ken Salazar (Dem.-CO).Line spoke to the Daily Caller, in an unprecedented protest of coverage by the Caller and other conservative news sites and blogs that criticized the One Nation Rally for the large amounts of trash left at the Lincoln Memorial, the World...

A federal judge on Wednesday questioned Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's justification for canceling 77 drilling leases sold by the Bush administration around national parks in Utah. A U.S. Justice Department lawyer maintained Salazar had good reason to cancel the leases - and that a lease isn't a lease until Salazar decides to issue one. Until the government decides to release a parcel for leasing, even after an auction, it doesn't have to do it, Tyler Welti argued. Those arguments seemed to leave U.S. District Judge Dee Benson less than satisfied during a two-hour hearing, the first in a lawsuit brought...

Energy Policy: As the job-killing deepwater drilling ban continues offshore, our interior secretary defends an onshore ban imposed in Utah. If we could drill in places like that, maybe oil wouldn't be gushing a mile under the Gulf of Mexico. The 64-million-gallon question in the Gulf oil spill is why we were drilling 5,000 feet down in the first place. The administration line, as expressed by the president in his recent Oval Office speech, is that oil resources on land and just offshore are running out. The falsity of that claim can be seen in the battle over 77 oil...

With Interior Secretary Ken Salazar working to renew the administration’s push for a six month moratorium on deep water oil and gas drilling, media organizations now have the opportunity to balance out their coverage by reporting on job loss projections for the gulf region. Earlier this week, a federal judge in New Orleans sided with industry groups and ruled against Obama’s order. As the administration prepares to appeal this ruling, the NYT should ask Salazar and other key figures to rationalize their actions with hard economic realities described in the court ruling. The Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association and...

Nearly 150,000 jobs connected to the offshore oil drilling industry are in jeopardy over hypocrisy from the Obama administration. In the Gulf Coast alone, where the economies of the Gulf States are still recovering from devastating hurricanes, the Obama administration has made it clear that they will play politics with the livelihoods of the citizens rather than do what is right. When so many people are depending on government to do the right thing, the Obama administration says one thing and does another. Consider the unfolding episode with Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar. Salazar has come under scrutiny for falsifying...

Energy Policy: Our interior secretary plans to reinstate the offshore drilling moratorium struck down by a federal judge. But if deep-water drilling is so unsafe, why are we helping Brazil drill nearly three times as deep? Maybe Secretary Ken Salazar can explain why Britain and others can safely drill in the North Sea and no other nation has suspended its offshore drilling. Yet there he was Tuesday saying he'll reissue a reworded moratorium that will make it clear to dunces like U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman why offshore drilling is unsafe. As with health care reform and other issues, the...

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Tuesday he will issue a new order imposing a moratorium on deepwater drilling after a federal judge struck down the existing one. Salazar said in a statement that the new order will contain additional information making clear why the six-month drilling pause was necessary in the wake of the Gulf oil spill. The judge in New Orleans who struck down the moratorium earlier in the day complained there wasn't enough justification for it. Salazar pointed to indications of inadequate safety precautions by industry on deepwater wells. "Based on this ever-growing evidence, I will issue a...

Immigration: The president tells a border state U.S. senator that if we beef up border protection Democrats will lose the bargaining chip for comprehensive immigration reform. Forget national sovereignty — sue Arizona! As the Obama administration prepares to sue the state of Arizona to block its copycat enforcement of federal immigration law, Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl reveals that in a private meeting President Obama put his party's agenda above the nation's sovereignty. Last Friday, Kyl told the audience at a North Tempe Tea Party town hall meeting: "I met with the president in the Oval Office (regarding securing the...

On the 56th day of the worst environmental disaster in U.S. History, a group of conservationists and scientists are calling on President Barack Obama to fire Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The letter, signed by more than 100 groups and individuals, doesn't blame the former U.S. Senator from Colorado for all the corruption and other problems that have plagued the Interior Department and predate his tenure as Secretary; instead, it blames him for failing to clean it all up as he promised to do when he took over. "We think that Ken Salazar's time is up," said Nicole Rosmarino, with WildEarth...

The administration has decreed a six-month moratorium on exploratory drilling in the Gulf, based on a report that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar wrote for President Obama. Salazar claimed that a panel of seven experts selected by the National Academy of Engineering had peer reviewed his report. It turns out, though, that the seven experts never saw the recommendation for a moratorium, and in fact oppose it:The seven experts who advised President Obama on how to deal with offshore drilling safety after the Deepwater Horizon explosion are accusing his administration of misrepresenting their views to make it appear that they supported...

Energy Policy: The advisory board on offshore drilling says it never endorsed a moratorium, which was added later by the interior secretary. The only thing transparent about this administration is its lies. Experts brought together by the Obama administration to review offshore drilling safety were asked to review recommendations in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. They did not give their blessing to the six-month drilling moratorium announced by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and have accused him of deliberately appending their report to make it seem like they did. According to the New Orleans Times Picayune, Salazar's May 27...

In a poll released yesterday and reported Thursday evening on the Fox News' Bill O'Reilly program, 59% of Americans now disapprove of Obama's handling of the Gulf oil spill. The results of the poll were reported in a segment with radio commentator Laura Ingraham. Video Here. As Obama and the Administration come under increasing fire for their lackadaisical approach to the mounting problems created by the spill, which is moving closer to large stretches of beaches along the Gulf shoreline, the mainstream media has generally failed to report the widespread public dissatisfaction with Obama. Instead, the media has chosen to...

Today, I share the text of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's most-recent "Secretary's Priority Message" to employees, full of anti-Big Oil rhetoric.

Media Bias: As the Gulf Coast faced ecological disaster, the president yukked it up with White House correspondents. His Saturday radio address didn't even mention the oil spill. President Bush, call your office. Rarely has media sycophancy been on such sharp display as in the largely indifferent response to President Obama's own indifference to the oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The coverage has been far different from that given to President Bush's handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The White House announced Saturday morning that Obama would head to the Gulf Coast on Sunday, just a...

Energy: As the administration loosens restrictions on domestic energy development and offshore drilling, a reviled company develops technology to unlock America's vast shale resources. Drill, baby, drill. We have been among President Obama's harshest critics when it comes to the administration's overly restrictive energy policy, so we were pleasantly surprised to see him announce on Wednesday some light at the end of the pipeline. Some light, for many restrictions will remain in an energy policy best termed schizophrenic. Speaking at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C., Obama announced the welcome news that his administration will let lease sales go...

The Obama administration’s six-month delay in approving new offshore drilling leases in federal waters will become a new three-year ban, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar quietly told reporters last Friday. Which means that no new oil and gas leases will be approved during President Obama’s term even though two –thirds of the American public supports such activity, according to a December 2009 Rasmussen poll. Sixty percent also believe that gas and oil prices will drop if the government allows offshore drilling, opening up an estimate 14 billion barrels of oil and 55 trillion cubic feet of natural gas On July 14,...

... But the word “secret,” especially when applied to the possible doings of far-away federal bureaucrats, is right up there with “monument” in its ability to unleash vitriol among Western conservatives. In 1996, President Bill Clinton created the 1.7 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah with a surprise announcement that still resonates across the region as a symbol of government powers, or what critics call the abuse of those powers. The new Interior Department memorandum, people in both parties said, has reopened a wound from those days that never quite healed. “Given the lingering frustration felt by many...

Energy The administration asked for public comments on a plan to expand offshore drilling. When they came in 2-to-1 in favor, the Interior Department sat on the news. Time for a "Texas tea" party? When you ask for public comment on a major policy issue, at some point you should make the results public, not hide them until you can figure out a way to spin the public reaction to support a conclusion you've already drawn. On its last business day in office, the Bush administration published a proposed draft of a five-year plan to lease areas in the Atlantic...

The Obama administration cynically tells us we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, while they have done everything they can to delay or stop us from tapping our own energy resources still in the ground. One of Ken Salazar's first acts as Secretary of Interior was canceling 77 Utah oil and gas leases that had gone through seven years of studies, negotiations and land-use planning. In an instant, he eliminated hundreds of jobs, terminated access to vital oil and gas deposits, and deprived taxpayers of millions in lease bonus, rent, royalty and tax revenues. In short he was...

The White House would not object if Interior Secretary Ken Salazar chose to resign his cabinet post and run for Colorado governor... The White House's stance on whether Salazar can leave the cabinet on good terms is a key variable in the race to replace Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter, who announced this morning that he would not seek re-election.

nterior Secretary Ken Salazar said on Wednesday that big oil and natural gas companies will no longer be "the kings of the world" like they were under the Bush administration, announcing new drilling policies to protect the environment on western federal lands. While the reforms would likely slow the permitting process to search for oil and gas on government lands and decrease the number of acres available for energy exploration, Salazar rejected industry claims that the Obama administration's policy change would reduce domestic energy supplies. "The difference is in the prior administration the oil and gas industry essentially were the...

In another example of how liberals get their panties in a wad when they are challenged for the decisions they make, Ken Salazar resorted to name-calling and innuendo as he tried to defend the Obama Administration's extremist energy policies. Ken Salazar, criticized the oil and gas industry for accusing the Obama Administration of stifling energy development in the West and offshore. He also left little doubt that he felt that the industry is nothing less than an arm of the Republican party. I always find it amusing when liberals resort to this type of attack. No facts to counter the...

WASHINGTON — The Department of the Interior has frozen oil and gas development on 60 of 77 contested drilling sites in Utah, saying the process of leasing the land was rushed and badly flawed. The 77 government-owned parcels, covering some 100,000 acres in eastern and southern Utah, were leased in the last weeks of the Bush administration. But the leases were immediately challenged by conservation groups, and in January a federal judge blocked drilling on the ground that the Interior Department had failed to follow its own procedures for reviewing the appropriateness of lands designated for oil and gas extraction.

The Obama administration will make reforming the nation's 137-year-old hardrock mining law a top priority despite a full plate of higher profile issues, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Tuesday. Salazar told a Senate committee considering reform legislation that "it is time to ensure a fair return to the public for mining activities that occur on public lands and to address the cleanup of abandoned mines." The General Mining Act of 1872, which gives mining preference over other uses on much of the nation's public lands, has left a legacy of hundreds of thousands of abandoned mines that are polluting rivers...

Obama officials urge Senate action on climateBy DINA CAPPIELLO Associated Press writer Wednesday, July 8, 2009 2:06 AM MDT WASHINGTON -- Saying global warming poses unprecedented threats to Americans' way of life, four of President Barack Obama's top environmental and energy officials urged the Senate on Tuesday to pass legislation to reduce the pollution linked to the planet's rising temperature. The heads of the Energy Department, Agriculture Department, Interior Department and Environmental Protection Agency told a Senate panel it should pass a bill similar to one the House narrowly cleared late last month. That legislation would impose the first limits...

It really is all about Obama, isn’t it? The president’s Interior Secretary went on Today this morning and proclaimed that the Statue Of Liberty is “is about Pres. Obama’s agenda.” Ken Salazar was there to announce that, after having been closed subsequent to 9-11, the crown of the statue would be re-opened on July 4th. The entire Today crew is broadcasting from the statue this morning. Here’s the transcript of Salazar’s vainglorious claim, made in an exchange with Matt Lauer: View video here.

The Interior Department's Web site links to a page highlighting key officials. It's blank. ... Part of the holdup stems from a clash with Utah's two senators [...]. ... "We have a lot of work to do and some of it is on hold simply because we don't have the personnel confirmed as of this point," Salazar said. ... Sen. Bob Bennett, for one, isn't sure he wants that team in place. Bennett has placed a hold on the nomination of David Hayes to be deputy secretary out of concern about Salazar's decision to pull back on 77 leases for...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the Bush administration did not properly study the environmental impact of expanding oil and gas drilling off the Alaska coast and canceled a program to find new reserves. A three-judge panel in Washington found that the Bush-era Interior Department failed to consider the effect on the environment and marine life before it began the process in August 2005 to expand an oil and gas leasing program in the Beaufort, Bering, and Chukchi seas. The appeals court ordered the department, now run by President Barack Obama's appointee Ken Salazar, to analyze...

Interior Secretary Ken Salazr, the Obama administration's energy architect, apparently thinks the answer to all our energy worries is blowing in the wind. Salazar has slammed the brakes on efforts to develop vast new gas and oil fields offshore and in his home state of Colorado. During the campaign, candidate Obama said he would drill to find oil offshore. But Salazar now says he needs six months to formulate a comprehensive offshore-energy plan and to have "an open and honest conversation" about it with the American people. Increasingly, Salazar sounds like a man bedeviled by the winds. In speeches he...

Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is once again taking steps towards increasing our energy dependence. Just a few weeks after the Obama Administration unnecessarily slowed the process of leasing offshore areas to energy companies for drilling; Secretary Salazar is now rescinding leasing plans for oil-shale development on federal land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.The amount of oil available through oil shale is staggering. Some estimates have 1.2 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels of oil available in the Green River Formation, an area which expands through most of Colorado and parts of Utah and Wyoming. According to the U.S. Department...

In a second reversal of the Bush administration, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Wednesday he is scrapping leases for oil-shale development on federal land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Salazar rescinded a lease offer made last month for research, development and demonstration projects that could have led to oil-shale works on 1.9 million acres in the three states, greatly expanding the program. "I am withdrawing that Jan. 14 solicitation because in my view it was a midnight decision, and it was flawed," Salazar told reporters on a teleconference call from Washington, D.C

GAS AND OIL PRODUCERS ARE GETTING A CASE OF INDIGESTION that no anti-acid can cure. They fear that President Obama will break his campaign promise to allow drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the outer continental shelf, arguably jeopardizing U.S. energy security. Few are prepared to call our president "Barack the Bamboozler." Most people still take him at his word, given in his acceptance speech in Denver last August, that offshore drilling, especially for natural gas, is an important part of his administration's overall plan for making the nation energy-independent. On Sept. 23, the truth will out. ... Last...

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration on Tuesday overturned another Bush-era energy policy, announcing it was setting aside a draft plan to allow drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. "To establish an orderly process that allows us to make wise decisions based on sound information, we need to set aside" the plan "and create our own timeline," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced in a statement. Environmentalists and some tourism-dependent coastal states oppose the drilling, citing the potential for spills and urging an emphasis on renewable energy instead. Energy companies counter that drilling has become safer over the years and that...

Colorado’s Ken Salazar is facing his first major backlash as Secretary of the Interior. A national civil rights group says Salazar is “going Hollywood on us” and caving into actor Robert Redford’s demands that American oil and gas leases in Utah be cancelled. He is also being accused of going counter to the spirit of economic stimulus by cancelling the leases. Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) says higher energy prices will result from the decision to scrap the leases of 77 parcels of land for oil and gas drilling in Utah’s Redrock country. The group believes low-income families feel the...

SALT LAKE CITY – In a high-profile reversal of the Bush administration, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Wednesday the government is scrapping the lease of 77 parcels of federal land for oil and gas drilling in Utah's redrock country. "In the last weeks in office, the Bush administration rushed ahead to sell oil and gas leases near some of our nation's most precious landscapes in Utah," Salazar said from Washington in a teleconference call with reporters. He ordered the Bureau of Land Management, which is part of the Interior Department, to not cash checks from winning bidders for parcels at...

A Bush administration decision that sparked hot controversy in Utah has been turned topsy-turvy by the Obama Administration. New Interior Secretary Ken Salazar this afternoon canceled 77 oil and gas leases in Utah. In a news release, he said oil and gas supplies need to be developed responsibly to help reduce dependence on foreign oil, but it must be done in a thoughtful, balanced way that protects signature landscapes and cultural resources. The 77 parcels, which are the subject of a temporary restraining order, were part of a Dec. 19, 2008 lease sale offering 130 parcels in three areas in...

President-elect Barack Obama’s secretary of the interior nominee, Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), said he will consider restoring parts of an expired federal ban on offshore oil drilling, but told CNSNews.com that he has “no idea” how much of the drilling restrictions should be reimposed.