"It is a 20-block trip from the Interior Department headquarters to the House Natural Resources Committee's Capitol Hill hearing rooms, and Secretary Ken Salazar may get to know it well.

Committee Republicans, hoping to hold the gavel next session, are planning to bring Salazar and other top department officials to their turf for a host of oversight hearings. In the past two years, Republicans have accused Interior of instituting a de facto moratorium on shallow and deepwater offshore drilling, conspiring to unilaterally block development on millions of acres of public lands by creating "secret monuments" and weakening national security by subjecting U.S. Border Patrol agents to overly onerous restrictions on Southwestern wilderness.

If Republicans control the committee, they hope to turn those accusations into hearings, and lots of them."

Patrick Reis reports for Greenwire November 1, 2010. [2]