don't forget, more changes coming, too:

Susan Rice Emerges as Probable Successor to Hillary Clinton
By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan and Flavia Krause-Jackson, Bloomberg News, November 9, 2012

[...] Six current or former White House officials, who all spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said Rice remains close to President Barack Obama and shares many of his views on foreign policy. They emphasized that the president hasn’t made a final decision, and Clinton may remain in her post for some months into Obama’s second term.

Former White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley and other officials said Obama’s first move will be choosing a successor to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. He also may need to find successors to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, the officials said.

Rice is thought to be the president’s preferred choice over two other strong candidates, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry of Massachusetts and National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, according to the current and former administration officials [...]

Current word (and it may not be true) is that the affair was with his biographer, the extremely attractive, and married, Paula Broadwell. Try to watch this Jon Stewart interview without cringing. I dare ya.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-january-25-2012/paula-broadwell

I just got the that Tom Ricks is sure to have some poop on what's going on; here's what he says:

Why does Petraeus have to go?

I suspect that someone in the military with an axe to grind ratted out David Petraeus for having an extramarital affair. I am told that President Obama tried to talk Petraeus out of resigning, but Petraeus took the samurai route [....]

So it seems that you can have an affair and even though you SHOULD technically resign, you don't necessarily HAVE to, and your boss might even try to talk you out of it.

But if it's an affair with a much younger person who used access to you to write a bestseller, and then that person tries to access your CIA emails, you probably have to fall on your (ahem) sword.

Good to know.

In general, we should ignore people's affairs.

Found the new article at the NYT quite interesting on the intersecting lives of 3 people which do happen to have amounted to more than a hill of beans in this world

Petraeus, Seen as Invincible, Self-Destructs

(By Scott Shane, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Peter Baker withThom Shanker, Michael R. Gordon and David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington, and Viv Bernstein from Charlotte, N.C.)

Examples:

She recounted how she had first e-mailed Mr. Petraeus about her doctoral dissertation and then showed up in Afghanistan, where he helped her in what she called a mentoring relationship, as he had many young officers. She said she and Mr. Petraeus shared an interest in fitness and that he took her running.

“That was the foundation of our relationship,” she said. From time to time, they would go running in Kabul. “For him, I think it was a good distraction from the war.”

From her many profiles and interviews, Ms. Broadwell, who was born while Mr. Petraeus was a West Point cadet, emerges as a younger, female version of him: travel to 60 countries; service in intelligence, special operations and with an F.B.I. counterterrorism task force; Harvard degree; wife of a physician; mother of two boys.

Once Mr. Obama took office, he did not speak regularly with Mr. Petraeus, preferring to restore what he considered the normal chain of command. For his part, Mr. Petraeus disdained some of the president’s aides, once telling an associate that David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s political guru, was “a complete spin doctor,” Bob Woodward later reported in a book. Mr. Petraeus was effectively banned by the administration from Sunday talk shows but maintained private communications with journalists and lawmakers.

A key moment in the turnaround of the tense relationship between the president and the general came when Mr. Petraeus met with Rahm Emanuel, then Mr. Obama’s chief of staff and his lookout for possible rivals. In roundabout ways, not quite explicit but understood by both men, Mr. Petraeus assured Mr. Emanuel that he had no intention of running for president, according to people informed about the conversation.

But amid the media storm, many friends and admirers of the family thought of Holly Petraeus, his wife of 38 years, herself descended from a distinguished line of military officers. In a March 2012 profile, USA Today referred to her as “Army royalty,” noting that her great-great grandfather fought in the Civil War and the Indian Wars, and that her great-grandfather and grandfather had also served — a point she herself made while testifying before the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs in February 2011.

“I come from a military family, one that has a tradition of service going back to the Revolutionary War,” she said then. “My father served in the Army for over 36 years, fighting in both World War II and Vietnam. Two of my brothers also served in Vietnam and, of course, my husband is currently serving. And I’m a military mom as well.”

Mrs. Petraeus has carved out a prominent role for herself as an advocate for the financial education of military families.

Jane Mayer @ newyorker.com, A Petraeus Puzzle: Were Politics Involved? Nov. 11:

[....] According to the Times, approximately two weeks ago, F.B.I. investigators confronted Petraeus personally about the matter. After talking to him, they were satisfied that there were no breaches of national security or other crimes involved. It was then, the Times reports, that Petraeus certainly became aware of the investigation, if he had not known of it before. Interestingly, he did not offer his resignation at once, raising the question of whether he would have resigned at all if he hadn’t been asked to when the issue was about to become public [....]

The Times uses the word “murky” to describe what happened next, and there are many puzzling aspects. But according to the Times, at the end of October, a week or so after the F.B.I. investigators confronted Petraeus, an unidentified F.B.I. employee took the matter into his own hands. Evidently without authorization, he went to the Republicans in Congress.[....]