{"id":174,"date":"2015-10-25T10:49:01","date_gmt":"2015-10-25T14:49:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/?p=174"},"modified":"2015-10-25T10:50:24","modified_gmt":"2015-10-25T14:50:24","slug":"sunday-morning-coffee-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/?p=174","title":{"rendered":"Sunday Morning Coffee"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s difficult to overstate how much the <a href=\"https:\/\/benghazi.house.gov\" target=\"_blank\">Select Committee on Benghazi<\/a> hearing on Thursday helped <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hillary_Clinton\" target=\"_blank\">Hillary Clinton<\/a>. \u00a0 Republicans on the panel came across as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/news_and_politics\/politics\/2015\/10\/the_benghazi_hearing_was_a_self_destructive_partisan_embarrassment_for_the.html\" target=\"_blank\">defensive<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2015\/10\/23\/the_benghazi_bust_trey_gowdy_and_his_gop_colleagues_embarrassed_themselves\/\" target=\"_blank\">dishonest<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2015\/10\/23\/opinions\/nelson-benghazi-hillary-clinton\/\" target=\"_blank\">disrespectful<\/a>. \u00a0Secretary Clinton looked&#8230;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/politics\/news\/trey-gowdy-just-elected-hillary-clinton-president-20151023\" target=\"_blank\">Presidential<\/a>&#8230;while withstanding a total of about 11 hours of interrogation. \u00a0She appeared to be in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/entry\/benghazi-committee-hillary_56292597e4b0aac0b8fc14ef\" target=\"_blank\">control of the facts, the proceedings, and herself<\/a>. \u00a0Conservatives <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2015\/10\/conservative-media-hillary-clinton-benghazi-committee\/412117\/\" target=\"_blank\">by and large agreed<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Republicans held this hearing because they wanted to showcase their attacks on Secretary Clinton. \u00a0The problem is that their attacks have no real factual basis &#8211; they cannot show that Clinton did anything wrong. \u00a0That they refused to back off &#8211; and instead gave her a golden opportunity to prove it &#8211; showcases the poor political judgement of the people Republicans send to Congress these days. But if you think <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Trey_Gowdy\" target=\"_blank\">Trey Gowdy<\/a> is an amateur, wait until the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.esquire.com\/news-politics\/politics\/news\/a39130\/planned-parenthood-committee-wingnuts\/\" target=\"_blank\">new special committee<\/a> to investigate <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Planned_Parenthood\" target=\"_blank\">Planned Parenthood<\/a>.starts holding hearings. \u00a0This Committee will attempt to use <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2015\/08\/04\/opinions\/louis-planned-parenthood\/\" target=\"_blank\">demonstrably fake videos<\/a> to make a case for withdrawing federal funding from the organization. \u00a0Like the Benghazi Committee hearings on Thursday this will backfire by giving those they&#8217;re out to get a prominent platform on which to defend themselves.<\/p>\n<p>Check out <a href=\"http:\/\/bearingdrift.com\/2015\/10\/20\/memo-to-dave-brat-stick-to-cutting-government\/\" target=\"_blank\">this post<\/a> attacking <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dave_Brat\" target=\"_blank\">Congressman Dave Brat<\/a>\u00a0on immigration at <em><a href=\"http:\/\/bearingdrift.com\" target=\"_blank\">Bearing Drift<\/a><\/em>, self-described as &#8220;Virginia&#8217;s Conservative Voice.&#8221; This blog provides a <a href=\"http:\/\/bearingdrift.com\/about\/\" target=\"_blank\">broad range of conservative voices<\/a> and sometimes even offers valid and well-reasoned challenges to liberal thought. \u00a0But the real fun comes in the comments when the more&#8230;activist&#8230;wing of the Republican Party stops by to show its bigotry. As an example take a look at <a href=\"http:\/\/bearingdrift.com\/2015\/10\/20\/memo-to-dave-brat-stick-to-cutting-government\/#comment-2322016022\" target=\"_blank\">this comment<\/a> from &#8220;mpolito.&#8221; \u00a0To this person\u00a0blacks and Hispanics &#8220;are more prone to crime [and] welfare use&#8230;emphatically, unequivocally, and consistently.&#8221; \u00a0And the only way to stop them is to put them all in jail. \u00a0As of right now this post has 231 comments, all too many of them in this bigoted vein.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s difficult to overstate how much the Select Committee on Benghazi hearing on Thursday helped Hillary Clinton. \u00a0 Republicans on the panel came across as defensive, dishonest, and disrespectful. \u00a0Secretary Clinton looked&#8230;Presidential&#8230;while withstanding a total of about 11 hours of interrogation. \u00a0She appeared to be in control of the facts, the proceedings, and herself. \u00a0Conservatives [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,35,50,17],"tags":[52],"class_list":["post-174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-and-elections","category-right-wing-fever-dreams","category-sunday-morning-coffee","category-virginia-political-blogs","tag-benghazi"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":177,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions\/177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}