Rachel Maddow: Former Bush Cabinet Secretary Gale Norton Subject of Formal Corruption Investigation
By Heather Saturday Sep 19, 2009 9:00am
From the L.A. Times--Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton is focus of corruption probe:
The Justice Department investigation centers on a 2006 decision to award oil shale leases in Colorado to a Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary. Months later, the oil giant hired Norton as a legal counsel.
Reporting from Washington - The Justice Department is investigating whether former Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton illegally used her position to benefit Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the company that later hired her, according to officials in federal law enforcement and the Interior Department.
Could we finally see the Justice Department coming down on a member of Bush administration?
Maddow: Ken Salazar inherited responsibility for about 500 million acres of the Earth when President Obama appointed him secretary of the interior. Yesterday, as we reported, he announced that he would shut down the Interior Department office known during the Bush administration as the place where department staffers snorted meth off of toaster ovens.
The inspector general reported that in addition to the toaster oven meth-snorting, employees of one middle management office had sex with, did drugs with, and took embarrassingly small bribes from people in the oil and gas industry they were supposed to be regulating.
Now, the secretary of the interior during the time of the toaster oven, meth-snorting, what‘s known as the department‘s orgy era, was a person named Gale Norton. During the orgy era at her department, Gale—at her department—Gale Norton awarded Shell Oil a bunch of extremely lucrative leases to squeeze some oil out of federal lands.
Two months after the big present for Shell Oil was announced, Gale Norton quit the Department of the Interior. Where did she go to work after that? You guessed it. Shell Oil.
Dear Miss Norton, thank you for submitting your resume.
If then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton discussed her future employment with Shell while she was making the decision to award the company those lucrative leases, she will have broken the law. An internal investigation was launched of this while George W. Bush was still in office.
And “The Los Angeles Times” reports today that it has now been turned over to the Justice Department in a formal criminal referral. That makes Gale Norton the first Bush cabinet secretary to be the subject of a formal corruption investigation. She, of course, is also the first to have multiple results show up when you goggle her name along with the words meth, toaster oven and snorting.
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that ever did anything for anyone other then himself!
republicanism is a mental illness!
Republicanism can't possibly be a mental illness because mental illnesses require there to be a mind to infect.
The whole republican party has been shaped into an employment service. Just no actual work required.
republicanism is a mental illness!
Republicanism is a spiritual illness.
There is no pill for that.
Don't insult the mentally ill!
:D
...it's like religion to them!
MZ
A good time to be a Republican. Bad time to be an American.
that they are coming down Hard on a woman. Shades of Martha Stewart and Leona Helmsley.
Sad to say that's the first thing I thought of.
Well, actually the first thing I thought of was "We've got our Lynndie England...bad apples...and so forth."
Whatever bribe Norton took pales in comparison to those "deferred benefits" ol' Dead Eye Dick got from Halliburton.
Nothing to see here folks. Move along.
the Obama admin to go after you. Either that or you didn't pay your, uh, "dues."
and I loved it!
Thanks Rachel... lets see who Nose what!
Edited:
Big Business? Oh no how could that be!
But, I have to wonder, how are Fox and the conservatives going to square their defense of Norton with their attacks on ACORN, especially given the size and significance of the two controversies.
I'd wager they won't defend Ms. Norton too loudly. The ceremonial whipping-girl scapegoat has been chosen. After she is publicly humiliated and then imprisoned, ALL of the Bush Admin's offenses will be wiped off the slate.
I admit I'm over-stating it, and Ms. Norton deserves to be prosecuted; but not as much as Bush & Cheney do. Only they'll never pay their dues to Society.
Easy question. They will call it a "witch hunt", libs going after "big oil", etc. Libs hate corporations that make profits. Gale Norton is just a capitalist trying to do her job in the "free market".
Unofficial, but she had been putting out feelers about running for the Senate seat currently held by Bennet.
Guess they will be looking for someone else.
There must have been some meth residue left on the chrome plating...
Here's a story you won't see on faux spews. Too busy bitching about Acorn
Too busy
bitchinggloating about Acorn.FIFY.
I think it is on hold until this health care sausage making is finally done (they want a little GOP support).
Of course they will start small, but it can only lead upwards.
GOP defending torture as mid terms start up has a nice ring to it.
Oil shale is the future, and Norton should be thanked for opening up the resource for exploration, although she should not have accepted bribes, and her people should not have had sex with, or done drugs with, the oil company employees. This is bad form for government workers.
There is at most six years of domestic off-shore oil reserves, and then it is all gone. In contrast, we have 400 years of recoverable hydrocarbon reserves locked in our Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado oil shale deposits.
America is the energy giant of the world, and will become a hyper-power this century.
....global warming. Think green my friend.
on windmills, my friend.
That's what I thought.
to root one out, does it?
was to investigate and use different methods of extracting oil from shale, but Ms. Norton gave the most of the contracts to one company which uses the same (dirty) method for all their extracting.
I think we will always need petroleum -not to burn as fuel WHAT A WASTE! -but for myriad other uses, plastics & and much more. We ought to be preserving it, and recycling plastics, if only for that reason. The oil corporations would do just FINE financially if they only had some grit, guts and intelligent foresight. Apparently they do not.
Now the the MORONS on the Right will say she is wrongfully accused because the Whore gives such good DOUBLE LIP LOCK ON THE LOVE MUSCLE RESULTS. Remember FACTS do not matter only the fiction of the Racist Nazi Committee known as as the republican party the PARTY of NO Hysteria and ASSINE antics. The Destroyers of AMERICA yes the the INBRED party of HATE the republican party
Did she;
1)Feed the bears?
2) Catch a salmon
3) Shoot an elk?
Nooooooooooo........
Took an oath, crapped on it and lined her own pockets, seemingly.
BUT! Is that really unusual for the rightard tribe who blasts ACORN while stuffing trillions in Wall Street pillowcases in the Bahamas?
Recovering oil from oil shale is dirty and expensive. The funny thing is that gasoline can be made from carbon dioxide and water using cheap wind, solar power or even fusion power. People look at the current price of renewable energy and think oil is cheaper. But the price of oil will go up and supply lessen and demand increase. The price of renewable will get cheaper with time. within the next twenty years renewable will be cheaper and the benefits of having cleaner air and water will be free.
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