The systematic trawl by lobbies and the media through the past activities of US Cabinet nominees continues to throw up embarrassments of varying degrees at the nominees to President-elect George W. Bush's Cabinet.
Now comments in 1996 by the controversial designated Interior Secretary, Ms Gale Norton, about slavery and states' rights are being used by environment groups to claim that she is insensitive to the brutality of slavery and unlikely to be sufficiently diligent in asserting federal controls on states.
Ms Norton is also strongly opposed by the conservation lobby for supporting the commercial exploitation of the country's huge national parks.
Mr Bush was last night due to name two more members of his team. To take Ms Linda Chavez's place as Labour Secretary, he nominated Ms Elaine Chao, a former deputy secretary of the Department of Transport and wife of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Mr Bush also named Mr Robert Zoellick yesterday as US Trade Representative.
Mr Zoellick is a former deputy chief-of-staff of Mr George Bush snr and served in the Reagan era as a senior Treasury official. The latest challenge to Ms Norton will add to her problems at the Senate confirmation hearings, although the immediate reaction to the reports suggest politicians did not think she had taken a direct hit.
Speaking in 1996 to a conservative think tank in Denver, the Independence Institute, Ms Norton said of the Confederacy: "We certainly had bad facts in that case when we were defending state sovereignty by defending slavery.
"But we lost too much," she added. "We lost the idea that the states were to stand against federal government gaining too much power over our lives."
Ms Norton's views of the rights of states are commonplace in the South, and her spokeswoman, Ms Marti Allbright, insisted she was in no way expressing support either for slavery or secession.
"She was saying that people had lain down in support of states' rights. That is the difference between Southern and Northern perspectives on the Civil War."
But Mr Kenneth Cook of the Environment Working Group, which unearthed the quote, insisted: "Her deeply divisive remarks suggest she lacks a vital instinct to protect what needs protecting, whether it's wilderness or people of colour".
At the opening of hearings yesterday on his nomination for Defence Secretary, Mr Don Rumsfeld convincingly deflected suggestions that a 1971 tape of him at a meeting with President Nixon reflected racist views on his part.
Although his questioning did reflect strong criticism of the Defence Department, its tone suggested the scale of the challenge he faces rather than any inclination to vote him down.
On the controversial issue of National Missile Defence, Mr Rumsfeld asked senators to consider whether their failure to deploy such a system would not in fact contribute to proliferation by depriving potential allies of a shield and thus encouraging their acquisition of new missile technology.
AFP adds: A spokesman for Mr Bush, Mr Ari Fleischer, yesterday cautioned President Clinton to speak respectfully of his successor to the White House, following Clinton comments that reiterated the fact that Mr Al Gore had won the popular vote and questioned the Florida recount debacle.
"There is another tradition in this country of presidents leaving office with respect for their successors, and I'm certain that President Clinton will want to follow that," he said.