EMILY LITELLA WEIGHS IN on the Rice nomination.

MEXICO: Beauty Queen Died With Gun in Hand.

RON PAUL’S Exit Interview.

ALL OF US SHOULD HOPE TO DO AS WELL: Female Store Clerk Gets in Gun Fight With 3 Armed Robbers and Wins.

TOM MAGUIRE: Walk, Don’t Run To The Gym. I was going to make a Ventures joke, but I couldn’t come up with anything.

SUSAN RICE HAS INVESTMENTS with companies doing business with Iran.

MERYL YOURISH has posted some free chapters of her new book, Darkness Rising.

WHITE HOUSE BAD FAITH: Boehner Angered by Leak of Phone Call. “Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio and Republican leaders are fuming after a late night phone call with President Barack Obama was leaked to the press, despite an agreement that it would not be, according to several GOP aides. Republicans believe the administration leaked details of the 30-minute Wednesday night phone call to Politico, which is causing them to question whether they can trust the White House to keep details private, a sentiment that has caused progress in the negotiations over the ‘fiscal cliff’ to stall.”

White House aides deny leaking it. Maybe it was the CIA folks who are listening to Obama’s calls. . . .

NEWS YOU CAN USE: What Turns A Hookup Into A Girlfriend.

WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? Two-Thirds of Millionaires Left Britain to Avoid 50% Tax Rate.

THE INCREASING UNIMPORTANCE of imported oil. It’ll be even less important if fracking and the Keystone pipeline move forward.

CAN WE STOP MODERN DAY MAD SCIENTISTS? Forget geoengineering. I’d look at an infectious-disease expert with Deep Ecology beliefs. . . .

JIM BUTCHER FANS: The latest Dresden Files book is out.

FASTER, PLEASE: First Gene Therapy Successful Against Aging-Associated Decline: Mouse Lifespan Extended Up to 24% With a Single Treatment. How did I miss this?

SCIENCE: Can A Jellyfish Unlock The Secret of Immortality?

OUR BRIGHT NATIONAL FUTURE: 200 Square Foot Homes. “Austin, 23, sees the tiny home he’s building as perfect for Generation Y — underemployed, credit-crisis kids who know they will probably never achieve the ‘Mad Men’-era American ideal of a one-income family with a large house in the suburbs, two kids and two cars.”

Takeaway quote: “These tiny houses feels like we are going backwards.” I believe you mean Forward!

IS THE PRESS turning on Susan Rice? “Well, when Right Turn and Mother Jones agree, is there any room for doubt? (Or maybe it’s the sign of the apocalypse?)”

Related: “Rice was always expendable. She was the capsule into which the Benghazi scandal was enclosed for burial.”

Say, speaking of that, what about all the people who were rescued from the Consulate? What are their names? Why haven’t we heard anything from them?

UPDATE: Reader Robert Frick emails:

Regarding your question about the people rescued during the Benghazi attack on Sept 11, 2012, I would guess the reason the public has not been told who they are is because most if not all are CIA. The work they were doing may be classified and/or they are under a general order not to talk to the press. This is fairly common for people who work for intelligence services. Classified status of course has never stopped press outlets like the NY Times from publishing details of secret projects when it serves a political purpose. Still, I don’t see why an outfit like FOX News or a foreign press couldn’t at the very least publish a general expose that doesn’t reveal names.

Who the people extracted from Benghazi that night are is just one of the questions I’ve been waiting for the press to ask ever since we learned of this horrific incident. The others are what exactly was Ambassador Stevens doing in Benghazi the day he was murdered, and if the president really gave an order to do everything possible to help the remaining men still under attack, who countermanded him with the Stand Down order? I don’t know what’s more shameful – a likely presidential cover-up or the refusal of the American press to inquire seriously about it.

If all the people in the Consulate — not the CIA Annex a mile away, but the actual Consulate — were CIA, then that would be quite unusual, and would suggest that there was a lot going on. It would also support the claim that the attack on the consulate was an effort to free jihadis who had been seized and held for interrogation, though by all accounts that was going on over at the Annex. But who knows? There’s certainly not much press interest in reporting on it.

FROM MODERN INK, some recommended culinary blogs.

ANDREW TUTT: When Is Software Speech for Purposes of the First Amendment?

ORIN KERR ON The Mosaic Theory of the Fourth Amendment.

ROGER SIMON: ‘Mind Your Own Beeswax!’: How Social Conservatives Can Win By Losing.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: College Degrees With The Worst Return On Investment.

JOURNALISM: Do you get the feeling AP editors are worried about being tried in absentia and sentenced to death? They’ve demonstrated that violence and intimidation work where they’re concerned. May they have joy of the incentive system they’re creating.

CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Why The Republican Party Can’t Do Anything About Ballot Security. Because they’re forbidden by a decades-old consent decree. “To the RNC’s credit, they’v tried to get out of it. So it is up to private citizens to make sure our polls are free from criminal conduct.”