The Senate overwhelmingly confirmed President Barack Obama's choice of five-term Sen. John Kerry to be secretary of state, with Republicans and Democrats praising him as the ideal successor to Hillary Rodham Clinton.
President Obama on Monday will nominate Chuck Hagel as his next defense secretary and counterterrorism adviser John Brennan to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, two potentially controversial picks for his second-term national security team.
Geithner declares Monopoly money legal tender
Prior to announcing his nomination of Sen. John F. Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, for secretary of state (as a payback for launching his presidential career as the keynote speaker during Mr. Kerry's 2004 presidential bid, no doubt), President Obama put further wear on his shoulder rotator cuff patting himself on the back for his foreign policy and national security accomplishments ("Obama nominates Kerry for secretary of state," Web, Friday).
With U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's withdrawal from consideration for the position of secretary of state, some have assumed that Congress will now be less insistent on a full accounting of the facts surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi that resulted in the murder of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.
One day after Senate Republicans held a press conference to question this week's State Department report on the Sept. 11 terrorist attack in Libya that left four Americans dead, Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe said the scandal is bigger than Watergate and Iran-Contra.
President Obama on Friday nominated Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts to be secretary of state, succeeding Hillary Rodham Clinton and filling the first key post of the president's second-term national security team.
Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, recently withdrew her name from consideration as President Obama's next secretary of state. This paves the way for Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry to assume the role.
An independent panel charged with investigating the deadly Sept. 11 attack in Libya that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans has concluded that systematic management failures at the State Department led to inadequate security that left the diplomatic mission vulnerable.
