I'm perfectly happy to call out the Obama administration when I think they deserve it, but this whole Susan Rice "controversy" is nothing but one in a long line of Republican faux outrages. What I find appalling is how this worthless, bootlicking American media helpfully blows this up and fans the flames when the Republican whack jobs roll out of their clown car:

WASHINGTON — Susan E. Rice may have hoped that paying a conciliatory call on three hostile Senate Republicans on Tuesday would smooth over a festering dispute about the deadly attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, and clear a roadblock to her nomination as secretary of state.

But the senators seemed anything but mollified, signaling instead that they would still oppose Ms. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, if she is nominated by President Obama, even after she conceded errors in the account of the assault she gave on Sunday morning television programs shortly after it occurred in September.

Two of the Republicans, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, said they would seek to block Ms. Rice, who according to administration officials remains Mr. Obama’s preferred choice to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The third Republican, Senator John McCain of Arizona, said on Fox that he would be “very hard-pressed” to support Ms. Rice.

“Bottom line, I’m more disturbed than I was before,” Mr. Graham said after the tense, closed-door meeting.

The continued criticism of Ms. Rice, 48, a diplomat with close ties to Mr. Obama, deepens an already bitter and unusually personal feud between the White House and Republicans over Libya. Responding to a question about criticism of Ms. Rice at a news conference two weeks ago, Mr. Obama said, “If Senator McCain and Senator Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me.”

If Rice is who Obama wants as his Secretary of State, then he should make her a recess appointment and be done with it -- you know, like Bush the elder did with Lawrence Eagleburger.

Evidently fed up with Republican stalling on the appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick as director of CMS, the Obama administration announced its intention to use a recess appointment to bypass the roadblock.

From the White House blog:

But with the agency facing new responsibilities to protect seniors’ care under the Affordable Care Act, there’s no time to waste with Washington game-playing. That’s why tomorrow the President will use a recess appointment to put Dr. Berwick at the agency’s helm and provide strong leadership for the Medicare program without delay.

Cue Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Betsy McCaughey, who will step forward to say the "death panels" will now become reality. It just drives conservatives crazy to see their worst nightmare -- health care reform -- come to pass, even as opposition to it drops away.

Ezra Klein also points out the foolishness of Republican obstruction with regard to Berwick:

But conservatives are making a serious mistake by forcing the administration to rely on a recess appointment for Berwick. Ultimately, what weakens Berwick weakens them, as Berwick, whether they know it or not, is one of the best friends they could have in the administration. That's because insofar as Berwick is a radical, he's a radical in favor of a patient-centered health-care system -- a position that has traditionally been associated with conservatives, not liberals.

This has escaped notice because political activists don't pay much attention to questions of delivery-system reform. Of the three legs that balance the health-care reform stool -- cost, access and quality -- cost and access have traditionally been at the forefront of the issue, and are both politically polarized topics. Quality, however, is a demilitarized zone: Conservatives aren't for high rates of post-operative infections, and neither are liberals.