Since Jewell abrogated the federal government's trust responsibility to King Cove villagers at Christmas, a Coast Guard medevac helicopter from Cold Bay was forced to battle gale-force winds and blizzard conditions to rescue a 63-year-old villager suffering heart failure and desperately in need of medical help. It will not be the last such rescue, and eventually one of these evacuations will end badly.

Jewell promised Interior would come up with road alternatives. So far, it has done nothing. Her rejection of the land swap was simply Obama administration sop for environmentalists who fear the road could set precedent for other refuges and are angry about Arctic drilling and the Keystone XL pipeline.

To assuage them, she endangered King Cove residents. Her land swap refusal illustrates what happens when government abandons even the pretense of trying to do the right thing for the right reason.

Instead, Jewell's decision stands as a monument to the political excess and arrogance that are this administration's hallmark.