Into the Breach ; Kempthorne a Solid Pick for Interior Secretary

Summary

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Naturally, we would have preferred that President Bush tap someone from Colorado for the job. But Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne seems a good choice to replace Gale Norton as secretary of the interior. He'll of course be pilloried as a puppet of industry and "big oil" by greens, for whom no one but a reincarnated John Muir will do. But being attacked and vilified by career activists should by now be written into the secretary's job description, so that goes with the territory.

There are a number of reasons to like Kempthorne. He's a Westerner, which is important, given the disproportionate impact federal land policies have on the region. He's a former senator, which means he knows his way around the corridors of power. And as the former chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee's Drinking Water, Fisheries and Wildlife subcommittee, he in the early 1990s became a proponent of reforming the Endangered Species Act -- something Congress is still working on today.

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Into the Breach ; Kempthorne a Solid Pick for Interior Secretary

Greens hate him -- which must mean he's a reasonable person. And he's touted as a champion of more state and local control over federal land policies -- an idea embraced by many in the West, but opposed by the green lobby, w...

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