The Senate this afternoon overwhelmingly voted in favor of approving John Kerry’s nomination to become Secretary of State, with only three Senators — Ted Cruz (R-TX), John Cornyn (R-TX), and James Inhofe (R-OK) — voting against their colleague. Earlier today, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee moved forward Kerry to the full Senate unanimously, reflecting the relative ease that Kerry has had in ascending to Obama’s second term cabinet.

Kerry has spent the last twenty-eight years in the Senate representing Massachusetts, all of them serving on the Foreign Relations committee, the last four as Chairman. The closeness in foreign policy vision that he shares with the Obama administration made Kerry one of the most likely choices to take the reins of State for the next four years. The ties between the two during Kerry’s chairman ship was close enough that former Sen. Gary Hart once called Kerry effectively “the congressional secretary of state.”

Kerry is the first of the President’s nominees to be confirmed following his inaugural. Kerry and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been speaking “almost daily” to prepare him to move into the 7th floor office in Foggy Bottom. Secretary Clinton will be stepping down following her last day on the job, Friday, Feb. 1.

Starting then, Kerry will have a full diplomatic plate, including pending negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, managing a rising China, limiting fallout from the Arab Spring in the Middle East, and advancing international action on climate change. In meeting these challenges, Kerry will find himself working closely with his replacement as Chairman on the Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ).

Kerry’s pending resignation of his Senate seat will prompt a decision among the people of Massachusetts regarding his successor. Retired Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) has made no secret of his desire to be named as interim Senator by Gov. Deval Patrick (D). No matter who temporarily fills the seat, a special election will be held in June, following an April primary. Former Sen. Scott Brown is thought to be the most likely Republican candidate, while Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) has received the support of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and other key Massachusetts Democrats.

President Obama plans to nominate Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State early Friday afternoon, according to a senior White House official. Kerry has been the de-facto nominee since U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice withdrew her name after Republicans attacked her comments about the September 11 attack on a U.S. consulate office in Benghazi, Libya. Kerry, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has significant foreign policy experience and believes climate change is the “biggest long term threat” to national security.

– Greg Noth

(Photo: White House)

Despite successfully blocking Susan Rice from becoming the next Secretary of State, Congressional Republicans and right-wing commentators continue to develop new conspiracies about the Obama administration’s alleged cover up of the circumstances surround the September 11 attacks in Benghazi.

The conservative reaction to the tragedy in Benghazi has been to lurch from conspiracy theory to conspiracy theory for months in an effort to portray the Obama administration as mishandeling the responseto the attack. Now, while some have crowed their pleasure that Rice has withdrawn her name from consideration to replace Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, several on the right have managed to read much more sinister motives into the timing behind the announcement.

Blending together reports that Clinton might not testify before Congress on Dec. 20 as previously thought, with Rice’s stepping aside, a new narrative has emerged where an even deeper cover-up is now taking place. Leading among those believe this new theory is Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), who on Thursday accused the Obama administration of pushing Rice out to draw attention away from a forthcoming report from the State Department on Benghazi:

CHAFFETZ: The State Department owes us a report. That’s why I think that’s why Susan Rice made the announcement today, because I think we’re on the verge of getting that report. But you’re starting to see the State Department squirm a little bit. They’re starting to say, “Well, we’ll just give you the summary, maybe Secretary Clinton might not come up.” I think the report — if it’s done accurately — is gonna be a very difficult thing for the White House, the State Department, the Department of Defense, and the CIA to explain.

The hosts of Fox & Friends jumped on the comment on Friday morning and ran with it. Host Gretchen Carlson wondered out loud, “Usually they make these announcements on Fridays, why did they do it on a Thursday? Perhaps this report will be coming out today, which will be the Friday release, or sometime soon.”

Watch it:

The State Department’s Accountability Review Board (ARB) will complete its report in the coming days, but it’s yet unknown when it will be released.

Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), chief antagonists against Rice’s potential nomination, have vowed to continue their pursuit of the truth in the Benghazi attack.

The U.S. Senate today killed the ratification of a United Nations treaty designed to improve the prospects of those with disabilities around the world by a vote of 61-38, ending the best chance of any significant treaty making its way through the lame duck session. All “no” votes came from Republicans and the measure fell just five votes short of achieving the two-thirds of the Senate approval required for passage.

In voting down the Convention on the Rights of People with Disability, Senate Republicans have rejected a treaty based principally around the United States’ own Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which passed 91-6 in 1990. The major provisions of the treaty were modeled after ADA’s requirements of providing equal access to all citizens regardless of disability; it’s passage also would have given the United States a seat on a committee charged with aiding in implementation.

An impassioned Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) took to the floor just prior to the vote, challenging arguments that the treaty would encroach on American sovereignty and require significant changes in current law. Instead, Kerry charged, the treaty could be boiled down to four words, “Be more like us.” Kerry, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was joined in pressing for the approval of convention by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in a rare moment of bipartisanship.

Kerry also wrote a op-ed in the Huffington Post earlier today, laying out the provisions of the treaty and shooting down arguments against it:

So let’s be clear: the Disabilities Convention is a non-discrimination treaty. It won’t create any new rights that do not otherwise exist in our domestic law. What are the U.S. obligations under this Treaty? Simple: prevent discrimination on the basis of disability only with respect to rights that are already recognized and implemented under U.S. law. In other words — keep doing what we already have done for the 22 years since we proudly passed the Americans with Disabilities Act.

As for the notion that this treaty supports an expansive “social” rather than a “medical” definition of the term “disability,” shifting the focus from physical to attitudinal barriers for persons with disabilities, don’t let the critics fool you.

It’s true that some countries were advocating for an unacceptable definition of “disability” during treaty negotiations. But those efforts failed. The counterarguments of the United States–and Dick Thornburgh–were successful and the flawed definition was not included in the treaty. Bottom line: the Treaty leaves it up to each country to apply the term “disability” consistent with its domestic laws.

Opposition to new treaties has become endemic among Republicans. GOP obstruction also lead to the blocking of the Convention on the Law of the Sea during this session, despite the united support of business and military leaders behind it. The near failure also implies that the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, both opposed by the 2012 GOP Platform, won’t be moving forward anytime soon.

Former Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS), also a previous Senate Majority Leader and 1996 candidate for President, was on the floor to lobby for Republican votes to help pass the treaty, but not even his presence, just days after being released from a brief stay in the hospital, was enough to save the vote.

Instead, Republicans chose to stand with former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) in his castigation of the treaty’s provisions. In doing so, they’ve managed to prevent millions of parents around the world from being afforded the safe protection of their children with disabilities that Santorum enjoys and denied the United States the ability to prompt other states to live up to its standards.

Last night, Fox News’ Sean Hannity continued the network’s Swift Boat attacks against Sen. John Kerry (D-MA). Since Tuesday, immediately following rumors that Kerry is a potential nominee to replace Leon Panetta as Secretary of Defense, the network has re-upped the oft criticized and debunked attacks that were first utilized in 2004 against Kerry, then the Democratic presidential nominee. Last night Hannity actually replayed a Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad, hosted a member of the group on his show, and even added his own supportive commentary to the ad and the attacks against Kerry.

Hannity interviewed John O’Neill, a conservative activist and Swift Boat Vets for Truth member. During the course of the interview, Hannity not only lauds O’Neill for the work he did in 2004 but even asks if the group will come back. Hannity also slams liberals for their criticism of the ad. Here’s one telling portion of the interview:

HANNITY: If in fact Barack Obama wants to nominate [Kerry] for Secretary of Defense or State, will the Swiftboat Vets for Truth come back?

O’NEILL: We’ll do the very best we can, Sean. I was contacted today, I spoke today with three different people that won the congressional medal of honor, who will do the very best we can. Heck, I mean, we’ve got hundreds of thousands of kids that have been engaged in combat, or in the armed forces, can you imagine them counting on John Kerry to protect their back…I mean, we already have got a problem….with Benghazi…

HANNITY: I know for the left it’s a pejorative, they give your and your fellow veterans, by the way, war heroes people who served their country honorably that, challenged lies that he told about other Vietnam vets, they use it as a pejorative. But this ad that you guys ran was very effective.

Media Matters has the clip:

Even Republicans like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who’s now on his own mission to tank Susan Rice’s career, criticized the ad in 2004, saying:

I think the ad is dishonest and dishonorable. As it is none of these individuals served on the boat (Kerry) commanded. Many of his crewmates have testified to his courage under fire. I think John Kerry served honorably in Vietnam.

The money trail on the Swift Boat ads leads back to well-known conservative operatives. Indeed, The New York Times found that the group “received the bulk of its initial financing from two men with ties to the president [Bush] and his family.” What’s more, in 2004, the Washington Post went further and dug up the fact that the “the group has raised $17 million, which includes more than $1 million each from T. Boone Pickens and Bob Perry, two Republican donors from Texas. The group has spent $1.2 million to mail anti-Kerry literature.”

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) managed this morning to both defend President Obama’s right to nominate Cabinet members and categorically ban the President from putting forward U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice to become Secretary of State.

In discussions on Fox News this morning, McCain refused to say whether he would join the movement to block confirming Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) should he be nominated Secretary of Defense upon the departure of current Secretary Leon Panetta. When doing so, McCain insisted to the Fox and Friends hosts that he believed that the Senate has “to give the President some ability to name his team.” In contrast, McCain didn’t equivocate in his opposition to Rice:

MCCAIN: Susan Rice should have known better, and if she didn’t know better, she’s not qualified. She should have known better. I will do everything in my power to block her from becoming Secretary of State. She has proven that she either doesn’t understand or she is unwilling to accept evidence on its face. [...] She went out and told the American people something that was patently false and defied common sense.

Watch McCain’s full interview here:

McCain was referring to Rice’s appearance on several Sunday news shows on Sept. 16 to explain the Obama administration’s thinking at that time on what caused the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya. Rice has since come under attack from the right for her statements on those shows, particularly that the attack was spurred by an anti-Islamic video. It has since been revealed that Rice was speaking from a set of talking points provided by the U.S. intelligence community, which was also provided to Congress. The video has also been cited by those on the ground as being an impetus for the attack in recent weeks, challenging the Republican narrative.

Rice is currently thought to be the leading candidate to replace Hillary Clinton when she departs from Foggy Bottom in the near future, despite the challenges that await her in facing Republicans in the Senate. Individual Senators have the ability to issue holds or blocks on specific nominations or legislation, granting each of the one hundred the ability to prevent Rice from coming to a vote.

During his television appearances this morning, McCain also floated the idea of forming a new Select Committee to investigate the events in Benghazi and the administration response. While the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is holding closed door hearings on Benghazi this week, along with their counterparts in the House, McCain believes that a Watergate-style committee is necessary to find the truth about what happened, as jurisdiction over the investigation spans four committees. “Nobody died during Watergate,” McCain insisted. “Nobody died in Iran-Contra.”

The Washington Post reported this week that President Obama is considering Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) as the next Pentagon chief and in response, Fox News wasted no time in running what looked like campaign opposition research on the Massachusetts Democrat. In a segment on the Post story today, Fox recalled baseless charges that the group “Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth” used to attack Kerry during his campaign against President George W. Bush in 2004. Back then, the group, funded by Republican donors, was widely criticized and its ads were debunked.

Yet, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly called the matter merely a “controversy” during the 2004 campaign, saying they had “challenged” Kerry’s record. The segment also rehashed Kerry’s “botched joke” in which he said in 2006 “you get stuck in Iraq” if you don’t get a good education (Kerry apologized for the comments). Watch the clip:

The Swift Boat claims are no more true now than they were in 2004, when Republicans like like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) immediately came to Kerry’s defense and slammed Swift Boat’s ad:

McCAIN: Individuals served on the boat (Kerry) commanded. Many of his crewmates have testified to his courage under fire. I think John Kerry served honorably in Vietnam.

Not surprisingly the group’s funders turned out to be conservative heavyweights. The New York Times reported at the time that the group running the ads “received the bulk of its initial financing from two men with ties to the president [Bush] and his family.”