Clinton Sec. of State Appointment Passes Senate Committee

Hillary Clinton seems to have passed muster with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This morning they voted 16-1 to approve her appointment as nominee for Secretary of State.

According to Reuters:

Clinton still has to be officially nominated and then confirmed by the full Senate but this is expected to be a formality, which...will take place shortly after the inauguration of Barack Obama as president on Tuesday.

Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican who this week questioned Clinton about her husband's raising of foreign funds for his charity, was the sole negative vote.

Committee Chairman Sen. John Kerry said Clinton did an "outstanding job" in her testimony before the committee this week but noted some senators had expressed concerns about her husband's charitable foundation and the adequacy of an agreement devised to avoid conflicts of interest.... Clinton, testifying to the committee on Tuesday, resisted Republican calls to amend a pact between her husband's foundation and the Obama transition signed on December 12.

Under that agreement, the Clinton foundation made public a list of its past donors, promised to annually publish the names of its future donors and agreed to submit future foreign donations to a State Department ethics review.

Clinton has promised a more "pragmatic" approach to U.S. diplomacy, relying on what she said was "smart power" rather than...[the] more ideological approach of the outgoing administration Bush administration.

She faces a barrage of challenges from tackling the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea to quelling the violence in the Gaza Strip following Israel's invasion last month.