Hillary Clinton Just Had the Best. Ten. Days. Ever

By the time the hearing wrapped up, the only thing new we had learned was that there are no limits on how low Republicans will sink to score political points - at a cost of almost $5 million and counting.

"Right now, she's an opponent", Trump said.

Hillary Clinton testifies before the House Select Committee on Benghazi October 22, 2015 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

What is more interesting, however, is the pirouettes Clinton's fans must achieve to maintain their unflinching support.

In the end, this concluded in a disaster for the Republicans and instead of their intended hindrance of Clinton's campaign, all this eleventh-hour debacle has done is give her one less scandal to worry about. Alabama's Martha Roby, not getting the joke. And we know from the committee's inspection that chief aide Cheryl Mills was allowed to alter the findings of the "nonpartisan" and "independent" State Department's Accountability Review Board report on Benghazi. Her calm demeanor was broken only twice, once when the character of Admiral Michael Glenn "Mike" Mullen was impugned (she was angry then) and once late in the day when she had a coughing fit. And it is most likely that she would have beaten him for the Democrat nomination anyway.

But while the hearing was still in progress, last Wednesday, Trump told radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt, he thought she sounded "terrible".

More to the committee's interest, Blumenthal was busy with Libya-related emails to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the same time he was advising business interests in Libya.

It is not the terrain of Gowdy's lame committee, but it is legitimate to examine Clinton's record in the Middle East. She was the target of - wait for it - a vast right-wing conspiracy aimed at, yet again, playing politics in hopes of hurting her chances of being elected to office.

If the Republicans had wanted to criticize the four deaths as resulting from the chaos induced in Libya by using military force to overthrow Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi in the first place, that would have been more acceptable. Now she is seeking the presidency. Of her five estimable defenders I would offer special kudos to two, one kudo to Elijah Cummings, hopefully our next senator, who played his usual role as the adult in the room keeping the children in line, and another to Tammy Duckworth, Iraq War hero, who is maturing nicely into a national leader.

Longer answer: Blumenthal is a former journalist who has worked for the Clinton Foundation and for Media Matters, the watchdog group that savages journalists who fail to fully grasp the Clintons' pivotal importance to humanity's salvation.

She had to be tenacious in figuring out when Libya had deteriorated into such a caldron of jihadis that our ambassador should either be pulled out or backed up. You must go on camera.

It continued, "For instance, Clinton had already answered questions about who handled requests for increased security at Benghazi prior to the 2012 attacks".

McCarthy, who was headed to replace outgoing House Speaker John Boehner at the time, torpedoed the committee and its zealous chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, when he said the Republicans created the committee to destroy Hillary Clinton's candidacy. As Hillary kept explaining, that job was the province of the "security professionals", four of whom were later criticized for providing "grossly inadequate" security at the Benghazi compound and removed from their posts.

The 11-hour hearing showcased the good Hillary, but there were occasional flashes of the bad. "There was nothing marked classified on my emails, either sent or received", she told Jordan.

"I absolutely think so". Nicknamed "Sid Vicious", think of him as the Clintons' Lee Atwater.

Republican members were unable to rattle her or get her to admit she lied when she initially blamed the attack on terrorists in emails to her daughter and in a call to Egypt's prime minister but said in public that the attacks were inspired by a crude Internet video satirizing the Prophet Mohammed. And she should have watched that baby like the Lady Hawk she is.