Lucky Stars - #330

#330 GALE NORTON
FORMER SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR UNDER THE DRUNKEN FRAT BOY (2000-2006)
If there is anyone getting down on her knees to thank her lucky stars, it has to be Norton. She resigned her position as Interior Secretary in 2006, letting the job go to former Idaho governor Dirk Kempthorne.

This solved some problems for Norton, one of which was the Corbell v. Norton case, [the settlement is known as Corbell v. Salazar] in which she was held in contempt of court for failing to produce factual information on amounts owed to thousands of American Indians under an Indian trust fund. (The plantiff in the case argues the trust fund owes 300,000 American Indians $27 billion dollars.) http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2005/07/federal-judge-blasts-doi-orders.php

But there was also the GOP Cocksucker #47 (JACK ABRAMOFF) Affair. After Norton left, GOP Cocksucker # 49 (STEPHEN J. GRILES) the assistant secretary of the Interior, became enmeshed in the Affair and lied to a Senate panel investigating whether or not #47 had used #49 and his girlfriend, GOP Cocksucker #48 (ITALIA FEDERICI) to gain access to the department.

Norton must have thought she was home free in her job as senior counsel for Royal Dutch Shell Oil. When Norton quit at Interior in 2006, she said she didn't have another job lined up, but suddenly, she landed the job as senior counsel at Royal Dutch.

Which strikes investigators as funny because two months before she quit, Norton had awarded three oil shale leases on Colorado land worth hundreds of billions of dollars to a subsidiary of....wait for it.....Royal Dutch Shell Oil.

With Thanks to TPM Muckraker, the website Sourcewatch and the legal research website The Jurist.

S. Olson