Ken Salazar, Hispanic Secretary of Interior Resigns; Female Replacement in the Works? White House Daily News Update

President Obama is losing another one. Another minority from his Cabinet, that is.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, who is Hispanic, announced today that he will step down by March.

Salazar's main point of note is his suspension of oil drilling after the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. He's also been pretty good on pushing renewables.

So far there's only speculation on who President Barack Obama might pick to replace him, but the pressure will only increase on the president to pick either a woman or a minority. One name that's been floated as a replacement is Christine Gregoire, the governor of Washington State whose term has just ended. That would help to bump up the number of women in the second term Cabinet.

Obama has several open Cabinet positions he'll need to fill in the coming months.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be succeeded by Sen. John Kerry, after Senate Republicans preemptively shot down the nomination of Susan Rice, a woman of color.

Lisa Jackson, an African-American, and Hilda Solis, who is Hispanic, have both announced their intentions to step down from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Labor Department, respectively.

Note that Salazar says he'll stay until March, probably making his resignation after Congress and the White House have hashed out a contentious compromise on the debt ceiling, giving Republicans a bit less leverage over Salazar's replacement.

They've already pulled strings with the Rice nomination, and now they're gearing up to weigh in on Chuck Hagel's nomination to the Defense Department, Jack Lew as Treasury Secretary, and John Brennan's nomination as CIA Director.

Brennan is more likely to be passed without too much trouble, unless some upstart in the Senate wants to make a name for themselves by making waves. Lew causes more consternation among Republicans, but only because he's a savvy negotiator. His economic chops are probably more worrying to progressives, but almost everyone will prefer him to Tim Geithner, who he's replacing.

Hagel is the prize for Senate Republicans, one of their own who switched sides and supported Obama in the last two elections. Sen. John McCain, for one, has never forgiven him for the slight.

For his part, Obama has urged patience on the part of his progressive critics, asking them to wait until he has made more nominations before they decide whether he has abandoned all pretense of gender and racial equality in his Cabinet.