Susan Rice will not be the next Secretary of State. She has tendered a letter to Obama asking that her name be withdrawn from consideration.

Her withdrawal leaves Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) as the leading candidate for the job. A senior administration official said “something strange would have to happen” for Kerry not to be the choice.

Watching Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi performing Born to Run, it doesn't get any better than that. The Hurricane Sandy concert is 5 hours and judging from the first half hour, it's going to be an incredible show. The Rolling Stones and the Who will also perform, among others. Billy Crystal is hosting and he's funny again. Celebrities are manning the phone banks.

Two billion people world-wide can watch.

All money donated goes to the Robin Hood Relief fund. There's a lot of ways to donate. Here's one. Or you can call 1-855-465-HELP. You can also help by ordering the music from the concert on iTunes. [More...]

Contra Spencer Ackerman, Owen Gleiberman, film reviewer for Entertainment Weekly, writes:

Part of the power of Zero Dark Thirty is that it looks with disturbing clarity at the ''enhanced interrogation techniques'' that were used after 9/11, and it says, in no uncertain terms: They worked.

As Andrew Sullivan notes, this is simply false, and is a huge moral problem for Kathryn Bigelow. She has to stand up now, it seems to me, and refute this conclusion about her film.

Yesterday's 11 Show, starring me, topic: the controversy regarding Kathryn Bigelow's new film "Zero Dark Thirty." See, e.g, Glenn Greenwald, Tommy Christopher on Joe Scarborough, Peter Bergen, David Edelstein, Dexter Filkins and Spencer Ackerman, to name a few.

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The 11 Show, starring me, today at 11. Topic for today: the controversy regarding Kathryn Bigelow's new film "Zero Dark Thirty." See, e.g, Glenn Greenwald, Tommy Christopher on Joe Scarborough, Peter Bergen, David Edelstein, Dexter Filkins and Spencer Ackerman, to name a few.

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Open Thread.

A hearing in the George Zimmerman case starts today at 9:00 am ET. You can watch online at CNNLive, WOFL-Channel 35, WESH-Channel 2, WKMG-Channel 6 and WFTV-Channel 9, and clickorlando.com.

The list of motions to be heard is here.

The motions, responses and replies are here and here

I think the most interesting part will be the battle over the tape of the call between the Martin family lawyers and Witness 8, aka Dee Dee.

Busy day. Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

It's official. Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper has signed Amendment 64. Adult possession of small amounts of marijuana is no longer a state crime in Colorado.

Hickenlooper also issued an executive order today forming the 24-member Force on the Implementation of Amendment 64. Its membership will include lawmakers and stakeholders representing the interests of prosecutors, defense lawyers, the medical marijuana industry, backers of Amendment 64, the addiction treatment community, public health institutions, cities, counties, “a representative of marijuana consumers,” employers and employees, among others.

Its meetings will be public, and the targeted date for its recommendations to the governor is Feb. 28.

Congratulations, Coloradans. You did it. Voting matters.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Sofitel Hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo have settled their civil suits against each other for an undisclosed amount. She sued him for the hotel room encounter, he counter-sued her for defamation.

Also settled: Diallo's defamation suit against the New York Post which had reported she was a prostitute.[More...]

The Rolling Stones are doing their soundcheck for tonight's performance at Barclay's Center in Brooklyn.

Don't forget you can watch the December 15 performance live on pay per view -- $40 for HD, $30 otherwise (at least on Xfinity/Comcast.)

The Stones have put an amazing quantity of songs from live shows, even full concerts, on You Tube. With one of those blue-ray/smart tv devices, you can easily watch You Tube videos on your big screen TV (as well as Netflix and Amazon Prime.) This is the one I got, (Sony $89), it's 1/3 the size of my old blue-ray player, the wi-fi is built in. [More....]

One month after Jim Letten, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Lousiana, announced the demotion Jan Mann, his first Assistant and Chief of the Criminal Division for anonymously commenting online about an ongoing criminal investigation, he resigned as U.S. Attorney.

Abruptly ending an 11-year run highlighted by the convictions of more than a dozen crooked politicians, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten resigned Thursday morning amid a metastasizing scandal in his office that started with prosecutors posting anonymous screeds on NOLA.com. Letten was the nation's longest-serving U.S. attorney, having been kept in the job by President Barack Obama despite his Republican affiliation.

Also this week, the Justice Department appointed John Horn, First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, as a special assistant to the attorney general to "prepare the required responses and to ensure the government's compliance with [the court's] instructions."

It wasn't just Mann who was commenting anonymously online. Another AUSA, Sal Perricone, was outed for his comments and resigned in May. One of the cases Perricone commented on was the Danziger Bridge case, involving the officers charged and convicted in the shooting deaths of unarmed individuals during Hurricane Katrina. Another news article with background is here. [More...]

Susan Rice is certainly capable and tough. One person who has spent a lot of time with Rice is struck by her “bristling certitude.” A former U.S. ambassador told me, “Rice does not know how to be unblunt.” But it is her judgment at critical moments — as displayed on whether to reopen the Sudan embassy or in her handling of the talking points on the killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans — that troubles me. - Roger Cohen, NYTimes [Emphasis supplied.]

The B words and Susan Rice are becoming more and more commonplace. In a remarkable column in the New York Times, for the first time that I can remember, Roger Cohen expressed concern about "bristling certitude" and "bluntness." His concern is regarding the supposed "bristling certitude" and "bluntness" of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice. But what, to use Susan Collins' favorite word, "troubles" him, or so he writes, is Rice's judgment. Oh really? I did a quick Google search and the closest thing I find from Cohen on the CONDOLEEZZA Rice judgment issue was this:

Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group and member of the Global Drug Commision, has an op-ed at CNN on the failure of the war on drugs.

Here we are, four decades after Richard Nixon declared the war on drugs in 1971 and $1 trillion spent since then. What do we have to show for it?

The U.S. has the largest prison population in the world, with about 2.3 million behind bars. More than half a million of those people are incarcerated for a drug law violation. What a waste of young lives.

[More...]

Busy day at work for me, here's an open thread for you. All topics welcome.

In November, Washington voters passed I-502 (full text here) which provides that adult possession of up to an ounce of marijuana or specified amounts of marijuana-infused products is not a state crime and creates a regulatory scheme to license sellers. The initiative is now law and went into effect today.

The vote on Colorado's Amendment 64, legalizing adult possession and setting up a regulatory framework to distribute and sell it, was certified by the Secretary of State today, and will become law by January 5.

The New York Times reports the Justice Department and Obama Administration are considering filing lawsuits to upend both states' laws, but a decision doesn't appear to be on the immediate horizon. [More...]