The Senate has confirmed Tracy Stone-Manning to lead the Bureau of Land Management on a party line vote. Republicans have been objecting to her nomination for months, due to her connection to an act of eco-terrorism, as well as her views on population control.
Senate Republicans also suspect that Stone-Manning will use her position to advance the left’s radical agenda on climate change.
Matthew Daly reports at the Associated Press:
Senate approves Biden land-agency pick over GOP oppositionA bitterly divided Senate late Thursday approved President Joe Biden’s choice to oversee vast government-owned lands in the West, despite Republican complaints that she is an “eco-terrorist.″Tracy Stone-Manning, Biden’s choice to lead the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, was approved, 50-45, on a party-line vote. Five Republican senators missed the vote.Republicans sharply criticized her nomination during an often acrimonious Senate debate, with several holding up a metal spike similar to one used in a 1989 environmental sabotage case.Democrats defended Stone-Manning, noting she was never charged with a crime and in fact testified against two men who were convicted of spiking trees to sabotage a timber sale in Idaho’s Clearwater National Forest.Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, called Stone-Manning a “dangerous choice to be put in charge of our public lands″ and said she ”continues to hold very dangerous views” against oil and gas drilling, logging and other commercial activity on federal lands.
Democrats have been shrieking about extremists since January, but Stone-Manning has gotten a total pass for her past behavior. She is far from innocent.
Tristan Justice writes at The Federalist:
While Democrats framed Stone-Manning’s immunity deal and subsequent cooperation in the case as heroic to shepherd along her nomination, new details emerged from the primary investigator on the case to reveal Stone-Manning as anything but cooperative.“Contrary to many stories in the news, Ms. Stone-Manning was not an innocent bystander, nor was she a victim in this case. And she most certainly was not a hero,” wrote Special Agent Michael Merkley in a July letter to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.“She was vulgar, antagonistic and extremely anti-government,” Merkley added, calling her “extremely difficult to work with” and “the nastiest of suspects.”The nominee’s trial in committee was made all the more complicated by her claim to have never been the subject of a government investigation. When asked in a standard questionnaire whether she had “ever been investigated, arrested, charged by any federal, state, or local law enforcement authority for the violation of any federal, state, or local law, regulation, or ordinance, other than a minor traffic offense,” Stone-Manning wrote no.
Biden has made some awful appointments, but Stone-Manning is one of the most radical ones so far.
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