| Morning Jolt – December 14, 2012 By Jim Geraghty Here's your Morning Jolt. Happy Friday! Jim Today's Menu/Cabinet Update: Waffles & Chuck Coming Up, 86 the Rice Boy, the holidays can louse up everyone's schedule -- even the administration's traditional Friday night embarrassing-news dumps: UN Ambassador Susan Rice has withdrawn her name from consideration for Secretary of State, saying the criticism surrounding her comments on Benghazi had become an "irresponsible distraction." "I am fully confident that I could serve our country ably and effectively in that role," Rice wrote in a letter to President Obama today. "However, if nominated, I am now convinced that the confirmation process would be lengthy, disruptive and costly -- to you and to our most pressing national and international priorities." Rice has been criticized by Republicans for her response to questions on the Sunday talk shows shortly after the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi killed four Americans. Sources tell ABC News that even before Rice withdrew her name from consideration to be Secretary of State earlier today, Senator John Kerry, D-Mass., had emerged as the leading contender, with the president convinced he would be the better Secretary of State. The president is all but certain to nominate Kerry, sources say, though no official decision has been made. The position of Secretary of Defense is not as far along in the process, but sources say former Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., seems to have an edge right now over other possible candidates such as former undersecretary of defense for policy Michelle Flournoy and deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter. She explained her decision in an op-ed in the Washington Post, and defended herself on Benghazi: When discussing Benghazi, I relied on fully cleared, unclassified points provided by the intelligence community, which encapsulated their best current assessment. These unclassified points were consistent with the classified assessments I received as a senior policymaker. It would have been irresponsible for me to substitute any personal judgment for our government's and wrong to reveal classified material. I made clear in each interview that the information I was providing was preliminary and that ongoing investigations would give us definitive answers. I have tremendous appreciation for our intelligence professionals, who work hard to provide their best assessments based on the information available. Long experience shows that our first accounts of terrorist attacks and other tragedies often evolve over time. The intelligence community did its job in good faith. And so did I. Not everyone's taking the news so well. Donna Brazile: "The boys network is alive and well. The war on qualified women continues here in Washington, DC. I am not going to stand down." Toby Harnden lays out the truth Brazile may not want to hear: "Newly re-elected & with 55 Democrats in the Senate, Obama had enough political capital to get Susan Rice confirmed as Secretary of State, but chose not to spend it." He wonders, why did Rice and the White House feel the need to send a letter withdrawing herself from nomination? Why not just nominate Kerry and say he was their top choice all along? Because they don't want to feed the narrative that Obama buckled in the face of GOP objections. Richard Grenell: "The Russians must be disappointed Susan Rice has withdrawn." Moe Lane: "Susan Rice was smart to withdraw. We WERE going to ask her about how she helped enable the Rwandan Genocide. For example." Drew M. "It's very weird that the most senior official to pay a price for Benghazi is the UN Ambassador who wasn't actually involve in it." For Time's Newsmaker of the Year, You Can't Pick This 'Un' Time informs us: Kim Jong Un is having a good year. After taking over the leadership of North Korea from his late father Kim Jong Il, at the end of 2011, he's solidified his control over the country, appeared on TIME's cover and he was even named 'Sexiest Man Alive.' (OK, that honor was actually bestowed as a spoof in the satirical newspaper, The Onion, but a Chinese news service mistook the Onion piece for real news and the story went global.) Now, he's gotten the most votes in TIME's completely unscientific reader Person of the Year Poll with 5.6 million votes. Not bad for a man who didn't make an official public appearance until 2010. This doesn't mean Kim is TIME's Person of the Year. That choice is made by the editors of TIME and will be revealed Dec. 19 on the Today show. The Time "Person of the Year" is something of an obsession of mine; it's supposedly one of our most interesting and useful markers of which figure most shaped the news. It's been a who's who of the 20th Century, for good and for ill -- Mahatma Gandhi, Franklin Roosevelt, Chiang Kai-shek, Hitler, Stalin, Eisenhower, Truman, Queen Elizabeth, Churchill, Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan, Lech Walesa . . . But in a serious dilution of the Time magazine brand and the prestige and prominence of the title, recent years have seen a trend of odd picks. As I wrote a few years back, perhaps driven by a desire for newsstand sales, perhaps driven by political correctness, perhaps by a reluctance to acknowledge picks that are perceived as conservative. I went through recent picks and suggested more plausible options by the magazine's original criteria (most influence on the news, for good or for ill): Time's picks: 2001: Rudy Giuliani 2002: The Whistleblowers (WorldCom, FBI, Enron) 2003: The American Soldier 2004: George W. Bush 2005: The Good Samaritans (Bono, Bill & Melinda Gates) 2006: You 2007: Vladimir Putin 2008: Barack Obama 2009: Ben Bernanke 2010: Mark Zuckerberg For contrast, here are my suggestions for which figure or figures had the most influence each year: 2001: Osama bin Laden 2002: Dick Cheney (it was in the post-9/11 era his influence was clearest) 2003: Saddam Hussein (from rule to war to capture, his story was the story of the year) 2004: George W. Bush 2005: Danish Cartoonists 2006: Nancy Pelosi (she was the face of the broad backlash against Bush) 2007: Gen. David Petraeus (for masterminding the Iraq surge) 2008: Barack Obama/Ben Bernanke 2009: Barack Obama/Neda, the Slain Iranian Protester 2010: The Tea Partier I'm sure some will quibble here and there. But looking back, the Whistleblowers look minor in lasting influence; the American Soldier could be nominated any year; Bono and the Gateses are commendable but could be picked any year; Putin is powerful but could be picked any year; Bernanke was a year late; and "You" just looks silly. This year it has to be Obama, right? Would anyone argue that there was a figure on the national or world stage who had as much influence over events as the president? If the Package Includes an Ark-Like Container, Don't Open It The University of Chicago Admissions Office gets the coolest mail in the world: Indiana Jones Mystery Package We don't really even know how to start this post. Yesterday we received a package addressed to "Henry Walton Jones, Jr.". We sort-of shrugged it off and put it in our bin of mail for student workers to sort and deliver to the right faculty member -- we get the wrong mail a lot. Little did we know what we were looking at. When our student mail worker snapped out of his finals-tired haze and realized who Dr. Jones was, we were sort of in luck: this package wasn't meant for a random professor in the Stat department. It is addressed to "Indiana" Jones. What we know: The package contained an incredibly detailed replica of "University of Chicago Professor" Abner Ravenwood's journal from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. It looks only sort of like this one, but almost exactly like this one, so much so that we thought it might have been the one that was for sale on Ebay had we not seen some telling inconsistencies in cover color and "Ex Libris" page (and distinct lack of sword). The book itself is a bit dusty, and the cover is teal fabric with a red velvet spine, with weathered inserts and many postcards/pictures of Marion Ravenwood (and some cool old replica money) included. It's clear that it is mostly, but not completely handmade, as although the included paper is weathered all of the "handwriting" and calligraphy lacks the telltale pressure marks of actual handwriting. What we don't know: Why this came to us. The package does not actually have real stamps on it -- the outside of the package was crinkly and dirty as if it came through the mail, but the stamps themselves are pasted on and look like they have been photocopied. There is no US postage on the package, but we did receive it in a bin of mail, and it is addressed to the physical address of our building, Rosenwald Hall, which has a distinctly different address from any other buildings where it might be appropriate to send it (Haskell Hall or the Oriental Institute Museum). However, although now home to the Econ department and College Admissions, Rosenwald Hall used to be the home to our departments of geology and geography. If you're an applicant and sent this to us: Why? How? Did you make it? Why so awesome? If you're a member of the University community and this belongs to you or you've gotten one like it before, PLEASE tell us how you acquired it, and whether or not yours came with a description -- or if we're making a big deal out of the fact that you accidentally slipped a gift for a friend in to the inter-university mail system. If you are an Indiana Jones enthusiast and have any idea who may have sent this to us or who made it, let us know that, too. We know this sounds like a joke/hoax . . . it's not (at least, from our end). Any hints, ideas, thoughts, or explanations are appreciated. We've been completely baffled as to why this was sent to us, in mostly a good way, but it's clear this is a neat thing that either belongs somewhere else -- or belongs in the halls of UChicago admissions history. Internet: help us out. If you're on Reddit (we're not) or any other nerdly social media sites where we might get information about this, feel free to post far and wide and e-mail any answers, clues, ideas, thoughts, or musings to indianajonesjournal@uchicago.edu (yes, we did set up an email account just to deal with this thing). It was probably sent to the University of Chicago because the sender had heard that Professor Jones had been denied tenure at Marshall College. In case you missed that decision: Permit me to list just a few of the more troubling accounts I was privy to during the committee's meeting. Far more times than I would care to mention, the name "Indiana Jones" (the adopted title Dr. Jones insists on being called) has appeared in governmental reports linking him to the Nazi Party, black-market antiquities dealers, underground cults, human sacrifice, Indian child slave labor, and the Chinese mafia. There are a plethora of international criminal charges against Dr. Jones, which include but are not limited to: bringing unregistered weapons into and out of the country; property damage; desecration of national and historical landmarks; impersonating officials; arson; grand theft (automobiles, motorcycles, aircraft, and watercraft in just a one week span last year); excavating without a permit; countless antiquities violations; public endangerment; voluntary and involuntary manslaughter; and, allegedly, murder. ADDENDUM: Cameron Gray sums up Thursday night: "Tonight's the last Thursday Night Football game of the year. The bad news: Last Thursday Night Football game of the year. The good news: No more Cee Lo Green opening song." To read more, visit www.nationalreview.com Save 75% . . . Subscribe to National Review magazine today and get 75% off the newsstand price. Click here for print-edition information. Click here for digital-edition information. 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