Ken Salazar: Sheriff of the Wild West

Ken Salazar always wore his signature Stetson hat, but the sheriff’s badge is new. When he was handed the reins of President Obama’s Interior Department, he discovered that the department had been operating like a frontier town with oil and gas leases sparking a modern-day gold rush, rather than a law-abiding governmental body. So Salazar pinned on the badge and is going about reinstating law and order. In Rolling Stone, Contributing Editor Tim Dickinson paints a portrait of the Interior Department under President Bush as an environment of “cronyism”, “corruption”, and “pervasive scandals” that will have a lasting effect on the environment and America’s pocketbook. He joins The Takeaway to talk Wild West politics, the legacy of the Bush Interior Department, and whether Salazar looks good in a sheriff’s badge.