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Over the past few days we've heard just how upset John McCain has been about Susan Rice's maybe-nomination because of how she handled the terror attacks in Benghazi and the lack of information he's been given regarding those attacks. He was so busy doing that, that he missed a classified Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing yesterday. Oops. Slate's Dave Weigel reports that, according to McCain's camp, it wasn't on purpose:

McCain spox Brian Rogers: "Senator McCain was absent from the [Benghazi] hearing due to a scheduling error." — daveweigel (@daveweigel) November 15, 2012

The "scheduling error" was apparently a press conference McCain held yesterday with fellow Senators Kelly Ayotte and Lindsey Graham. That happened shortly before noon yesterday. According to the liveblogs, appearances, and reports, McCain's Wednesday into early Thursday went like this:

11:09 p.m. Gets a shoutout tweet from David Axelrod about his absence at the classified hearing:

Sen McCain had plenty of time today for a demagogic presser on Benghazi, but none 2 attend a classified briefing on it?bit.ly/PVswQv — David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) November 15, 2012

November 15

This morning: went on the Today show to talk about Benghazi and Rice again:

McCain this morning fielded a question about wrong information regarding his defense of the Bush administration's claims that Iraq had WMDs: "Every intelligence agency in the world, including the British, believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction ... That’s an entirely different situation." said McCain. Apparently didn't need to go to the security briefing to know that.

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