Susan Rice withdraws.

"I didn’t want to see a confirmation process that was very prolonged, very politicized, very distracting and very disruptive because there are so many things we need to get done," she says.

I stand by what I said 2 weeks ago: We were "being played by a political maneuver designed to keep us from looking deeply and broadly into the issues surrounding the Benghazi attack." We were lured into focusing on and talking about Rice:

She was sent out onto 5 Sunday talk shows a few days after the attack, to say something about that terrible video, which is itself a contrivance, a distraction. So make it about the video and embody that in a specific person, whom we never noticed before. And let's yammer about her for weeks and months until we're tired of talking about her, and then — who knows? — John Kerry is the real choice for Secretary of State. Rice was always expendable. She was the capsule into which the Benghazi scandal was enclosed for burial. Once we're tired of Rice... we'll automatically already be tired of talking about the Benghazi scandal, which never even broke!

Ah, but the news comes out today — coincidence? — that Hillary Clinton is going to testify on Benghazi before both the House and the Senate committees.