Obama government Interior Secretary Ken Salazar threatens to punch a reporter out.

Last week, during an Election Day event supporting President Barack Obama in Fountain, Colo., U.S. Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar threatened a local reporter following a seemingly routine interview.

“If you set me up like this again, I’ll punch you out,” Salazar told Colorado Springs Gazette reporter Dave Phillips.

In an email to TheBlaze, U.S. Department of Interior spokesman Blake Androff confirmed that the altercation occurred. “The secretary regrets the exchange,” he wrote. The official did not provide any additional details.

Salazar had just finished answering questions about his policies for managing America’s wild horse population when the alleged incident occurred. Ginger Kathrens, executive director of the Cloud Foundation, was standing just feet away from Phillips when Salazar lost his temper.

“I was standing 3 feet away from Dave,” Kathrens told TheBlaze. “And when I turned, he kind of spat that at him and I thought, ‘Oh my God’…It was unbelievable.”

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who was Obama’s chief of staff during his first glorious four years, gets caught recording conversations with reporters without their permission. That’s a felony in Illinois.

The controversy has its origins in Monday’s Tribune story that two of its reporters were recorded without their knowledge by the Emanuel press office as they did phone interviews with city officials, including Police Supt. Garry McCarthy.

Emanuel, at his press conferences, hates it when reporters have the temerity to go off-message on him. His Monday appearance had been called to talk about physical fitness, veterans and the park district. When the wayward press corps turns to a different topic, the mayor’s default reprimand is to invoke “the children,” a subject that Emanuel believes he, and only he, really cares about. Unlike heartless news people.

“I have really big issues,” said the mayor, rebuking WMAQ-Channel 5 reporter Phil Rogers for continuing to press the issue of surreptitious tape recording. “The health of these kids, that’s my No. 1 issue . . . I don’t remember it in my 100-day plan or my four-year plan, a policy to make sure that you, journalists, that we have a record on that.”

Or, as Shakespeare put in “Antony and Cleopatra,” “Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have immortal longings.”

It is time for the smarmy, sanctimonious, I’m-the-only-guy-who-cares-about-the-children routine to end.

Who is that reporter kidding, other than herself? This is only the beginning of smarmy, sanctimonious, aggressive and illegal behavior from the likes of Emanuel. The Democrats have a mandate to do whatever they want, dontcha know.