'Evil' and 'Villainy' at Interior

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth has really gone (or been driven, depending on how you look at it) around the bend in his hatred of the Interior Department. Last week, the Post noted some choice quotes in his latest opinion in the long-running dispute over the department's handling of billons on dollars in Indian trust fund money. To wit: "For those harboring hope that the stories of murder, dispossession, forced marches, assimilationist policy programs, and other incidents of cultural genocide against the Indians are merely the echoes of a horrible, bigoted government-past that has been sanitized by the good deeds of more recent history, this case serves as an appalling reminder of the evils that result when large numbers of the politically powerless are placed at the mercy of institutions engendered and controlled by a politically powerful few." And this one: "The entire record in this case tells the dreary story of Interior's degenerate tenure as Trustee-Delegate for the Indian trust, a story shot through with bureaucratic blunders, flubs, goofs and foul-ups, and peppered with scandals, deception, dirty tricks and outright villainy, the end of which is nowhere in sight." National Journal quotes another blast from the same opinion in this week's issue: "Perhaps Interior's leaders have been evil people, deriving their pleasure from inflicting harm on society's most vulnerable."