Subject: Correct The Record Friday February 6, 2015 Afternoon Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2015 14:00:38 -0500
List-Id: <CTRFriendsFamily.americanbridge.org>

*​**Correct The Record Friday February 6, 2015 Afternoon Roundup:*

*Tweets:*

*Correct The Record* @CorrectRecord: "@HillaryClinton
<https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton> understands the importance of
investing in the fundamental building blocks that make America great."
http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/02/ohio_has_always_been_clinton_c.html
…
<http://t.co/YH1G67WaQz>[2/6/15, 10:32 a.m. EST
<https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/563721821401276416>]

*Correct The Record* @CorrectRecord: .@RepTimRyan
<https://twitter.com/RepTimRyan>: "I believe that @HillaryClinton
<https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton> would be the best person [to] lead
Ohio and our country forward."
http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/02/ohio_has_always_been_clinton_c.html
…
<http://t.co/YH1G67WaQz>[2/6/15, 10:11 a.m. EST
<https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/563716520925073409>]

*Correct The Record* @CorrectRecord: .@HillaryClinton
<https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton> has been a longtime advocate for
expanding #FMLA <https://twitter.com/hashtag/FMLA?src=hash>, enacted 22
years ago #FMLA22 <https://twitter.com/hashtag/FMLA22?src=hash> #tbt
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/tbt?src=hash>
https://www.congress.gov/bill/108th-congress/senate-bill/304 …
<https://t.co/Zp8eLKRk0h> [2/5/15, 4:01 p.m. EST
<https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/563442205876957186>]

*Headlines:*

*The Atlantic: “Grandmother in Chief”
<http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/grandmother-in-chief/385238/>*

“In 2016, however, Hillary may be more effective in conveying her real
attitudes toward children and families, which are anything but radical. In
part, that’s because high-profile working women are somewhat less
threatening than they were twenty years ago. But it’s also because running
as a grandmother may help voters see the cultural conservatism that has
been part of Hillary’s worldview all along.”

*Politico: “House Benghazi Committee lines up Obama administration
witnesses”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/benghazi-investigation-obama-officials-114963.html#ixzz3QyojsBqN>*

“Republican Chairman Trey Gowdy announced on Friday that top officials
close to both President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton have been called to appear for the House panel investigating the
2012 terrorist attacks in Libya.”

*The Hill: ‘Benghazi chief wants to hear from Clinton 'as soon as
possible'‘
<http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/231995-benghazi-chief-wants-to-hear-from-clinton-as-soon-as-possible>*

“The Republican chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi said
panel members want to speak to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
‘as soon as possible.’”

*Vox: “Elizabeth Warren's top media consultant isn't ready for Warren”
<http://www.vox.com/2015/2/6/7991655/mandy-grunwald-elizabeth-warren>*

“It shows that Warren is not laying the groundwork for a campaign, and that
Clinton really and truly does have the Democratic Party's top operatives
lined up behind her.”

*Articles:*

*The Atlantic: “Grandmother in Chief”
<http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/grandmother-in-chief/385238/>*

By Peter Beinart

February 6, 2015, 10:29 a.m. EST

[Subtitle:] Hillary Clinton insists that she is both a trailblazer and a
traditionalist, a case her new role as a grandmother helps her make more
convincingly.

On Monday, when Hillary Clinton issued a pro-vaccination tweet with the
hashtag #GrandmothersKnowBest,” journalists quickly spotted a potential
theme for her presidential run. For Hillary’s sake, I hope they’re right.
Because in 2016, grandmotherhood may help her convey the quality that she
so disastrously failed to convey for much of 2007 and 2008: authenticity.

It’s easy to mock Hillary’s constant talk about the obligations of
grandmotherhood, but it comes with an intriguing backstory: She had lousy
grandmothers herself. In her memoir Living History, Hillary’s descriptions
of her own grandmothers are harsh. On page two, she says that her maternal
grandmother, Della Murray, “essentially abandoned my mother [Dorothy Howell
Rodham] when she was only three or four, leaving her alone all day for days
on end.” At age eight, Della sent Dorothy to live with relatives. They
reunited ten years later, but when Dorothy realized that Della “wanted her
only as a housekeeper and that she would get no financial help for
college,” they parted ways again.

Hillary’s own memories of Della are also strikingly negative. She remembers
her maternal grandmother “as a weak and self-indulgent woman, wrapped up in
television soap operas and disengaged from reality.” When Hillary was ten,
and Della was babysitting, “I was hit in the eye by a chain-link gate…I ran
home three blocks, crying and holding my head as blood streamed down my
face. When Della saw me, she fainted.” Then “when Della revived, she
complained that I had scared her and that she could have gotten hurt when
she fell over.”

Hillary is critical of her paternal grandmother too. She calls Hannah Jones
Rodham—father of Hillary’s father, Hugh Rodham Sr.—“a determined woman
whose energies and intelligence had little outlet, which led to her
meddling in everyone else’s business.” And she remarks that, “I believe my
father knew that he had to make a break from Hannah if he was ever to live
his own life.”

It’s clear from Hillary’s memoir that she feels sadness, even anger, about
the absence of more caring, competent grandmothers from her own life. Her
current paeans to their importance, therefore, may be a bit like Barack
Obama’s lectures on the necessity of fathers. Behind the political
positioning lies a conviction born of personal pain.

Emphasizing grandmotherhood may be authentic for Hillary in another way
too. In the popular imagination, grandmothers are both caring and
conservative. They dote on their grandchildren while also tut-tutting about
a culture gone awry. They are pro-family in both the liberal and
conservative senses of the world.

That’s a good persona for Hillary because it reflects what she actually
believes. Even Hillary’s critics acknowledge that her devotion to the
welfare of children runs very deep. At Yale Law School, she made children’s
rights the focus of her studies, and in her first job in Washington,
working for what would become the Children’s Defense Fund, Hillary
investigated the appalling conditions endured by the children of migrant
workers. In Carl Bernstein’s biography, A Woman in Charge, Hillary’s friend
Nancy Bekavic says, “I remember being struck by this aggressive, ambitious,
bright woman who studied child development and cared about children. It was
unusual in some ways. Every young woman was running away from, you know,
childhood and family issues. Jesus Christ, the last thing you wanted to do
was family law … It was very unusual.”

When Hillary burst onto the national scene in the 1990s, her work on
children gained national attention. But because of the blowback she
provoked as the first non-homemaker First Lady, the nature of that work was
frequently distorted. The right portrayed her as a cultural radical who
wanted children to be able to sue their parents.

In 2016, however, Hillary may be more effective in conveying her real
attitudes toward children and families, which are anything but radical. In
part, that’s because high-profile working women are somewhat less
threatening than they were twenty years ago. But it’s also because running
as a grandmother may help voters see the cultural conservatism that has
been part of Hillary’s worldview all along.

In his biography, Bernstein quotes a former Clinton administration aide
calling Hillary “a very judgmental Methodist from the Midwest.” And it’s
true. Hillary’s most important mentor growing up was a local youth
minister. Despite attending college and law school in the late 1960s, she
never touched drugs. And while working on George McGovern’s 1972
presidential campaign, according to Bernstein, she carried a heavily
marked-up Bible around everywhere.

In 1994, according to Sally Bedell Smith’s book, For Love of Politics,
Hillary said she was “not comfortable” with distributing condoms in
schools. Hillary promoted abstinence from pre-marital sex in her 1996 book,
It Takes a Village, and surprised many reporters by declaring in a 2005
speech to family planning activists that, “Research shows that the primary
reason that teenage girls abstain is because of their religious and moral
values. We should embrace this—and support programs that reinforce the idea
that abstinence at a young age is not just the smart thing to do, it is the
right thing to do.” In It Takes a Village, Hillary is also critical of
adults for being too quick to divorce, declaring that, “Children without
fathers, or whose parents float in and out of their lives after divorce,
are precarious little boats in the most turbulent seas.”

Part of Hillary’s challenge in 2016 is mobilizing progressives excited by
the prospect of a woman president without mobilizing conservatives who see
her as a threat to traditional morality, as she did in the 1990s. Changing
times make that easier: Ambitious women are a little less scary now. But so
does her new role as grandmother. For decades now, Hillary has been
insisting that she’s a trailblazer and a traditionalist all at the same
time. Now, by running as a grandmother, she may finally make Americans
believe her.

*Politico: “House Benghazi Committee lines up Obama administration
witnesses”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/benghazi-investigation-obama-officials-114963.html#ixzz3QyojsBqN>*

By Lauren French

February 6, 2015, 10:33 a.m. EST

The House Benghazi Committee is set to interview nearly two dozen senior
Obama administration officials in the next three months.

Republican Chairman Trey Gowdy announced on Friday that top officials close
to both President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton have been called to appear for the House panel investigating the
2012 terrorist attacks in Libya.

Included on the witness list is former White House press secretary Jay
Carney, Gen. Martin Dempsey, former national security adviser Tom Donilon,
current adviser Susan Rice, Jake Sullivan, a former deputy chief of staff
to Clinton, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, former CIA
Director David Petraeus and former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.

White House chief of staff Denis McDonough is on Gowdy’s witness list as
well.

Also included are State Department “whistleblower” Mark Thompson, former
Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro, former U.S. Ambassador Thomas
Pickering, former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Matt
Olsen, retired Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, former deputy director of the Central
Intelligence Agency Michael Morell, Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills,
State Department official Charlene Lamb, State Department Undersecretary of
State for Management Patrick Kennedy, former White House National Security
Council staffer Benjamin Fishman and retired foreign service officer
William Burns.

Sullivan and Lamb are considered key figures in “Clintonland” while Mullen
and Pickering chaired the State Department’s investigation into the attacks
— a probe Gowdy has criticized for failing to interview Clinton.

Gowdy added in a letter sent to ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.)
that he plans to schedule an interview with Clinton “as soon as possible.”
Cummings said in January that Clinton told him verbally she would appear
before the panel to answer questions on the Obama administration’s response
to the attacks.

The witnesses will appear before the panel without a subpoena, but Gowdy
warned in his letter that if the State Department, CIA and Obama
administration do not meet a timeline set between Gowdy and the
administration, he would be prepared to issue formal requests for testimony.

“All told, over the next three months, the committee will gain access to
information not fully considered by any committee of Congress to date from
the nearly three dozen witnesses identified,” Gowdy wrote.

The interviews will be completed by the end of April, Gowdy said.

Thompson previously testified to the House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee that Clinton allegedly cut the State Department’s
counterterrorism bureau from the response to the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks,
which left Ambassador Chris Stevens dead.

Naming these key witnesses is, to date, the most aggressive action Gowdy
has taken since the panel was created last May. The loquacious Republican
has preferred to operate in private when interviewing witnesses and
requesting troves of documents from the State Department and CIA. The
committee has received more than 40,000 documents, Gowdy said last month,
but is still in negotiations with the Obama administration for thousands
more.

Gowdy has repeatedly stressed that he was unwilling to call in key
witnesses before he felt confident with the information the committee
received.

Rice’s inclusion on the list is a signal the seven Republicans on the panel
will focus on a series of talking points that the national security
adviser, then the U.S.’s ambassador to the United Nations, delivered on the
Sunday shows following the attacks. The details Rice presented have been
heavily criticized for purporting that an anti-Islamic video spurred the
attacks.

There also has been great attention paid to the White House’s involvement
in drafting and revising those talking points.

*The Hill: ‘Benghazi chief wants to hear from Clinton 'as soon as
possible'‘
<http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/231995-benghazi-chief-wants-to-hear-from-clinton-as-soon-as-possible>*

By Martin Matishak

February 6, 2015, 11:54 a.m. EST

The Republican chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi said
panel members want to speak to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
‘as soon as possible.’

The comments come at the end a list of desired witnesses Rep. Trey Gowdy
(S.C.) sent Thursday to Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), the committee's top
Democrat.

However, he does not give a timeframe for speaking with Clinton.

The 20 person list ‘does not purport to or begin to identify the full
universe of individuals the committee expects to interview or who might
have knowledge about the policies, decisions and activities related’ to the
Sept. 11, 2012 attacks, Gowdy said in his letter.

The interviews — set to begin Tuesday and conclude in April — show Gowdy is
making good on a promise he made last week during a rancorous committee
hearing that the panel would ‘ratchet up’ the pace.

The witness roster includes a number of high-profile Obama administration
officials, including: National Security Adviser Susan Rice and her deputy,
Ben Rhodes, White House chief of staff Dennis McDonough and Joint Chief of
Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey.

The list also includes former officials who were part of the administration
at the time of the attacks, such as then-White House press secretary Jay
Carney, CIA Director David Petraeus and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

*Vox: “Elizabeth Warren's top media consultant isn't ready for Warren”
<http://www.vox.com/2015/2/6/7991655/mandy-grunwald-elizabeth-warren>*

By Matthew Yglesias

February 6, 2015, 9:40 a.m. EST

An awful lot of people in progressive politics would like to see Elizabeth
Warren run for president, but the latest sign that it's not going to happen
is a big one — Mandy Grunwald is joining Hillary Clinton's team.

That's not a shocking move. Grunwald worked on Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign
and Hillary Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign. So she's a natural fit for
Clinton.

But she was also the top paid media consultant for Warren's 2012 Senate
campaign. To take the leap from the Senate to the White House, you need to
build on and expand your political team — not watch it shrink as key
personnel drift off to other campaigns.

To be clear, this isn't so much bad news for Warren — who has genuinely
never given any indication that she's wanted to challenge Clinton — as it
is for the circle of people who've latched on Warren as the hypothetical
Clinton-slayer of their dreams.

It shows that Warren is not laying the groundwork for a campaign, and that
Clinton really and truly does have the Democratic Party's top operatives
lined up behind her.