Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has pulled off the near impossible: At a time when the known gas and oil reserves of the United States on public lands have soared, he has cut back on federal leasing of them to just about 2 percent of available offshore lands and 6 percent of onshore. Meanwhile, huge new amounts of oil are now found on private lands despite, not because of, the Interior Department. When he was a U.S. senator, Salazar claimed that even $10-a-gallon gas would not change his mind about voting to increase offshore drilling. And although he controls the leases of the richest oil and gas reserves in the Western world, he just recently shrugged that no one knew whether gas would hit $9 a gallon.

Then there is the even stranger case of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, whose department helped oversee millions in bad loans to green companies like Solyndra, First Solar and Solar Trust of America — the Teapot Dome scandals of our times. Chu once infamously quipped before assuming office that he wanted U.S. gas prices to reach European levels. Apparently Chu wanted to force less fossil-fuel burning — although he later confessed that he does not drive a car…

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis just tried — and failed — to draft a proposal prohibiting kids under 18 from working “in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials,” even on family farms. And she wanted to turn over some farm training programs now run by the Future Farmers of America and the 4-H to the government. Most Americans raised on a farm believe that the times spent doing chores with their parents, siblings, and neighbors were the most important and rewarding years of their lives.