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When even Chris Matthews can see the dangers in pushing Susan Rice as Hillary Clinton's replacement, maybe the White House should pay attention. Via Eliana Johnson at NRO, the second term hasn't yet begun and Barack Obama needs as much political capital as possible to win on the "fiscal cliff." Why take on this fight, especially when an easy option --- and a better one --- in John Kerry is at hand? Matthews predicts a "very messy and hot" fight over the nomination if it indeed comes, which will be "not helpful," and Matthews hears it may not come at...

“If I wanted to be secretary of state,” Collins observed, “I would not go on television and perform what was essentially a political role.” Collins drew up a list of questions to ask Rice at their one-on-one hourlong meeting slated for Wednesday. She wants Rice to explain how she could promote a story “with such certitude” about a spontaneous demonstration over the anti-Muslim video that was so at odds with the classified information to which the ambassador had access. (It was also at odds with common sense, given that there were Al Qaeda sympathizers among the rebel army members that...

Possible promotions for U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and acting CIA Director Michael Morell remain in jeopardy after the two officials met Tuesday with three of their Republican critics regarding how the Obama administration responded to the attacks on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Libya. “Bottom line, I’m more disturbed now than I was before,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of the critics, said after the meeting. snip The discussions with McCain, Graham and Ayotte were arranged “to go over exactly the very questions that those senators had,” Carney said, including the origin of the information Rice conveyed on television. snip...

November 27, 2012 At the Associated Press, Benghazi Is Just a 'PR Disaster' Tom Blumer Well, if the President himself can call it "a bump in the road," why not? Monday morning at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, presented a story in advance of United Nations ambassador Susan Rice's meeting today with certain Republican senators -- a meeting from which Rice, who engaged in serial falsehood peddling during the weekend after the September 11 Benghazi attack, apparently falsehood-peddling Rice emerged today even worse-off than before. In that story, both the headline and first paragraph of Anne Flaherty's coverage...

Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte meet with UN Ambassador Susan Rice, who is a leading candidate for secretary of state despite the controversy over her comments on the deadly attack in Libya.

Jay Carney told the White House press pool that the focus on Ambassador Rice is "misplaced" when investigating Benghazi. Carney said that "there are no unanswered questions" when it concerns Ambassador Rice, what she knew, and who gave her the information that was the basis of her comments on the Sunday shows the weekend after the attack on the US consulate in Libya.

United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice has been catching all kinds of flak from Republicans about her Sunday talk show appearances in which it now looks an awful lot like she willfully participated in purposefully misling the American people about the true nature of the 9/11/12 attacks in Benghazi, Libya that resulted in four American deaths. At her own behest, some of her harshest critics — Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Kelly Ayotte — agreed to meet with her and hear her out on Tuesday morning, along with acting CIA Director Michael Morell, at a closed-door briefing. Apparently, her self-defense...

Under fire from congressional critics, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice stressed in a Tuesday statement that she did not intend to mislead the public about the September 11th attacks on the Benghazi consulate. "Neither I nor anyone else in the administration intended to mislead the American people at any stage in this process, and the administration updated Congress and the American people as our assessments evolved," Rice said. Rice has emerged as a high-profile administration for congressional critics who claim that the Obama administration tried to cover up a terrorist link to the attacks. Rice and acting...

After meeting with U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice this morning, three key Republican senators emerged to say they're more troubled — not less — by what they say were intelligence failures and misleading information concerning the September attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, which left four Americans dead. One, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said it's too soon to even be speculating about promoting Rice to be secretary of state. Congress needs to see "FBI interviews of survivors ... and what was said the night of the attack" about who might be responsible, Graham said, before considering the...