For those of you who keep up with the details of Washington machinations. Here's a bit of surprising news: The next Secretary of State John Kerry told The Boston Globe that President Obama offered him the State gig a week before U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice removed her name from consideration.

"He called me, actually a week before Susan got out of the thing," Kerry told the newspaper "He called me and said, 'You're my choice. I want you to do this.' He asked me to keep it quiet. I did. I sat on it."

That means that at least some of the hand-wringing over Rice and whether President Obama would go to the mat with Republican senators over a potential Rice nomination was probably for naught.

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