But so far right-wingers claiming that Clinton somehow faked her concussion have gone virtually unchallenged on Fox News and right-wing sites like Newsbusters and the Daily Caller. Everyone from Charles Krauthammer to Sean Hannity to Laura Ingraham and former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton have gotten into the act. Even after reports that Clinton also suffered a dangerous blood clot between her brain and skull, Bolton not only failed to apologize, he suggested that she was dodging Benghazi questions in order to protect her 2016 chances.

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Senor's main implication was that Barack Obama was suddenly showing his true anti-Israel cards by having "dug in" on someone he hasn't even nominated yet. The secondary suggestion, what with the mention of "highly qualified" along with the fact that both Susan Rice and former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy are female, seemed to be trying to beat Obama with a stick his campaign successfully wielded against Romney's: Diversity.

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Hillary Clinton announced when she was nominated for secretary of state that she would serve only one term. The ugly and divisive battle over her replacement has kept analysts busy for weeks.

Now that issue, at least, has been settled. On Friday President Barack Obama nominated Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) for the top job at Foggy Bottom, a post Kerry reportedly has long coveted.

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Kerry's nomination marks Obama's first move in a sweeping overhaul of his national security team heading into a second term.

If confirmed, Kerry will take the helm at the State Department from outgoing Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton. The Massachusetts senator is expected to be easily approved for the Cabinet post by his longtime Capitol Hill colleagues.

Kerry leapt to the front of Obama's list for the State Department job after U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice withdrew her name from consideration last week.

The official requested anonymity in order to discuss the announcement ahead of Obama.

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"If nominated, I am now convinced that the confirmation process would be lengthy, disruptive and costly -- to you and to our most pressing national and international priorities," Rice wrote in a letter to President Obama, NBC News first reported. "That trade-off is simply not worth it to our country ... Therefore, I respectfully request that you no longer consider my candidacy at this time."

"The position of Secretary of State should never be politicized," Rice continued. "As someone who grew up in an era of comparative bipartisanship and as a sitting U.S. national security official who has served in two U.S. Administrations, I am saddened that we have reached this point, even before you have decided whom to nominate. We cannot afford such an irresponsible distraction from the most pressing issues facing the American people."

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According to the New York Times:

[C]ritics — who include officials of human rights organizations and United Nations diplomats — say the administration has not put enough pressure on Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, to end his support for the rebel movement whose recent capture of the strategic city of Goma in Congo set off a national crisis in a country that has already lost more than three million people in more than a decade of fighting. Rwanda’s support is seen as vital to the rebel group, known as M23.

Support for Mr. Kagame and the Rwandan government has been a matter of American foreign policy since he led the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front to victory over the incumbent government in July 1994, effectively ending the Rwandan genocide. But according to rights organizations and diplomats at the United Nations, Ms. Rice has been at the forefront of trying to shield the Rwandan government, and Mr. Kagame in particular, from international censure, even as several United Nations reports have laid the blame for the violence in Congo at Mr. Kagame’s door.

Last week, Rice decried the actions of M23 via Facebook. "The U.S. condemns in the strongest terms horrific M23 violence. Any and all external support has to stop,” she wrote, drawing criticism for not naming Rwanda's president. Rice, who has been under fire in recent months over the narratives surrounding the September attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, remains a strong contender to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.

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Fiscal Cliff

Geithner emphasized the importance of Republican support in navigating away from the nation's impending "fiscal cliff." Regarding whether or not America will go over the fiscal cliff, Geithner put the ball in the GOP's court, saying on "Fox News Sunday," "That's a decision that lies in the hands of the Republicans that are now opposing increases in tax rates."

"It's going to be very hard for them," Geithner said. "You've heard them, for the first time, I think, in two decades now, acknowledge that they're willing to have revenues go up as part of a balanced plan. That's a good first step. But they have to tell us what they're willing to do on rates and revenues. That's going to be very hard for Republicans."

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Rice met with a number of Republican senators this week to try to win them over, ahead of a possible nomination for secretary of state. But so far she has not been successful.

“I continue to be troubled by the fact that the United Nations ambassador decided to play what was essentially a political role at the height of a contentious presidential election campaign,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, told reporters on Wednesday. She added that she “would need to have additional information” before voting to confirm Rice.

Collins, a moderate, would be a key Republican vote in the Senate if Obama were to nominate Rice. “Everybody knows [Collins] does her homework very carefully and that she thinks before she speaks, so it’s not a good sign for Susan Rice,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.

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No, that's not today! That was eight years ago when George W. Bush appointed his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to be the nation’s top diplomat a week after winning reelection.

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Susan Rice has done a "great" job as U.N. ambassador without explicitly endorsing Rice to be her successor.

Updated 4:36 p.m.:

In a subsequent interview with MSNBC, Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R.-N.H., agrees with Senator Collins that the 1998 embassy bombing "raised some very important questions" about Susan Rice's fitness for Secretary of State. What are those questions? Ayotte's not sure:

As I understand it, you know, Senator Collins raised the questions about what her role was there. she has asked for answers about what her role was with respect to embassy security and embassy security requests that were made prior to those two -- the attacks on our embassies there and so I don't know that those questions have been answered but I think they're important questions that were raised by Senator Collins and I certainly respect her experience in this area.

Neither senator addressed why the embassy bombings are of greater concern now than there were in 2009 during her honeymoon nomination process to be U.N. ambassador. According to a Nexis search, Collins had zero to say at the time about Rice being in a sensitive, high profile foreign policy position.

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Ricks, a Pulitzer-winning defense reporter, appeared on the network to discuss Benghazi, and called out Fox News for its "hyped" coverage of the attacks, "partly because Fox was operating as a wing of the Republican Party.”

Michael Clemente, executive vice president at Fox News, told the Hollywood Reporter that Ricks apologized for the appearance. “When Mr. Ricks ignored the anchor’s question, it became clear that his goal was to bring attention to himself -- and his book," Clemente said. "He apologized in our offices afterward but doesn’t have the strength of character to do that publicly."

"Please ask Mr. Clemente what the words of my supposed apology were. I'd be interested to know," Ricks told the Reporter in response. "Frankly, I don't remember any such apology."

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Rice met behind closed doors Tuesday with Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte — three of her harshest critics.

Ayotte said Rice told them that her national television description that a spontaneous demonstration triggered the attack on the U.S. consulate was wrong. She had made the comments five days after the raid based on intelligence information.

The lawmakers said the Obama administration still must answer questions about the attack.

Obama is considering Rice as a successor to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

After the meeting, according to reports, Ayotte told reporters that "it’s certainly clear from the beginning that we knew that those with ties to al-Qaida were involved in the attack on the embassy. And clearly the impression that was given of the information given to the American people was wrong. In fact, Ambassador Rice said today, absolutely, it was wrong."

She also said, "I have many more questions that need to be answered."

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But, according to the poll, only 40 percent of those surveyed say that they believe the Obama Administration purposely misled the public. "Fifty-four percent think those inaccurate statements reflected what the White House believed to be true at the time," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

48 percent of respondents also said that they believe the attack could have been prevented.

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The discussions, beginning Tuesday, will focus on her much-maligned explanations of the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, officials said, but she's also clearly auditioning for America's top diplomatic job.

Despite lingering questions over her comments five days after the Benghazi attack, Rice has emerged as the front-runner on a short list of candidates to succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton, with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., seen as her closest alternative. But despite a softening of Republican opposition to Rice, she still has work to do to ensure that enough GOP senators are willing to back her potential nomination.

Rice's series of meetings on Capitol Hill this week will therefore be a critical test both for Republicans, who will decide whether they can support her, and the administration, which must gauge whether Rice has enough support to merit a nomination. According to congressional aides and administration officials, Rice is expected to meet with small groups of lawmakers who will press her on her since-retracted description of the Benghazi attack as the byproduct of an angry protest over an American-made film ridiculing Islam. She'll be joined by acting CIA Director Michael Morell in the meetings.

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I doubt McCain is done being an angry, bitter man who still hasn't forgiven Rice for her attack on him during the 2008 presidential campaign. But someone must have told him that trashing an accomplished, relatively young woman of color who wasn't even remotely responsible for what happened in Benghazi is just not a good look these days. Maybe McCain underestimated how many people had Rice's back, from the Congressional Black Caucus to the president himself -- just as his fellow party members had underestimated the power of the voting bloc they commanded on Nov. 6.

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She said she respects Republican Sen. John McCain, who has been critical of her, but says "some of the statements he's made about me have been unfounded, but I look forward to having the opportunity at the appropriate time to discuss all of this with him."

Her comments attributing the attacks to a mob enraged over an anti-Muslim video posted on YouTube were widely denounced by Republicans during the U.S. presidential campaign. The attack came on the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States, and her critics said it was clearly a terrorist attack aimed at the anniversary. U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed.

The focus has fallen on Rice because she is a longtime White House insider and is believed to be President Barack Obama's first choice to replace Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is not expected to stay on during his second term.

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Dowd paints Rice as looking to close an alleged "stature gap" with her Benghazi Sunday show statements, quoting a colleague blaming her troubles on being "focused on the performance, not the content." Milbank says she's made "an impressive array of enemies — on Capitol Hill, in Foggy Bottom and abroad." Both Milbank and Dowd seem to rely entirely on the anonymous testimony of such enemies; there isn't a single named source in either piece.

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