Vox Sentences: Benghazzzzzzzzz

Hillary Clinton wins her Benghazi hearing; a US soldier is killed in Iraq; and why the Catholic Church's about-to-conclude conference is so important.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

Pwned

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

• Today, Hillary Clinton testified before the House of Representatives' special committee to investigate the 2012 attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.

• If you have forgotten about #benghazi, or never understood why it was ever a thing to begin with, Vox's Zack Beauchamp explains.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• Jamelle Bouie says Clinton actually benefitted: "Not only has she bolstered her image as a smart, competent policymaker, but she’s even defused her email controversy—or come close to it"

  [Slate / Jamelle Bouie]

• Even many conservatives who think Clinton has a lot to answer for on Benghazi were dismayed by the questions Republicans asked.

  [Erick on the Radio / Erick Erickson]

• Some of the most common allegations about Benghazi are, in the words of two former intelligence analysts, "head-smacking crazy."

  [Foreign Policy / Malcolm Nance and Nada Bakos]

• Republicans focused particularly on why Clinton emailed so much with Sidney Blumenthal — a longtime Clinton ally who weighed in frequently on policy matters despite little qualification.

  [Vox / Dylan Matthews]

• The one critique Republicans avoided entirely might have been the most widely-accepted one: the war in Libya has been a disaster.

  [War on the Rocks / Daveed Gartenstein-Ross]

• Many analysts who originally supported the war acknowledged by last year that the long-term costs had outweighed the short-term benefits.

  [The Monkey Cage / Marc Lynch]

Rest in peace

Marwan Ibrahim/AFP/Getty Images

• A US special forces soldier was killed in Iraq today during a raid on an ISIS compound.

  [New York Times / Michael R. Gordon]

• This is the first American soldier to be killed in action since the official end of "combat operations" in Iraq in November 2011 (though there have been a handful of fatalities for other reasons since then).

  [Statista ]

• According to the Pentagon, the raid, conducted with Kurdish special forces, was a rushed — but successful — attempt to rescue ISIS hostages who were about to be executed en masse.

  [BBC]

• The US says 69 hostages were rescued in the raid.

  [Reuters / Phil Stewart and Isabel Coles]

• The broader war against ISIS is going...slowly. The US' Iraqi allies haven't been making the progress in reclaiming ISIS territory that some hoped, and US drops of equipment have gone missing.

  [Washington Post / Liz Sly]

• This interactive map from the New York Times gives a good sense of what territory is still ISIS-controlled.

  [New York Times]

A division on Communion

Franco Origlia/Getty Images

• The Catholic Church's Synod on the Family, a three-week Vatican summit, is scheduled to end this weekend.

  [New York Times / Laurie Goodstein and Elisabetta Povoledo]

• The meeting could end with suggestions for changes to church doctrine. Some say the potential for reforms is the biggest since the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), in the 1960s.

• It's already been pretty scandalous. First, a group of conservative bishops wrote an open letter to the pope accusing him of stacking the synod with like-minded reformers.

  [Chiesa / Sandro Magister]

• Then, someone leaked a rumor that the Pope had a brain tumor to a local paper — a rumor the Vatican immediately denied.

  [Religion News Service / David Gibson]

• The biggest question facing the Synod is whether people who have been divorced (without getting a church annulment) and remarried should now be allowed to receive communion.

  [The Week / Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry]

• A group of reformers, led by the German bishops, believe the Church should show mercy to sinners, so shouldn't withhold communion from them.

  [National Catholic Reporter / Christa Pongratz-Lippitt]

• The early reports indicate the reformers don't have enough support to make their views the official recommendation of the synod.

  [Wall Street Journal / Francis X. Rocca and Tamara Audi]

• At the end of the day, it's up to Pope Francis. The Pope's assumed to side with the reformers, but he's even more into decentralization — which could mean allowing different regions to make their own decisions about Communion and other potential reforms.

  [Crux / John L. Allen Jr.]

• The question, though, is at what point "decentralization" turns into straight-up schism — a problem that's plagued smaller Christian denominations, like the Anglican Communion, who have had regional disagreements over the culture war.

  [The Week / Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry]

MISCELLANEOUS

White parents often fear that their children will suffer if they go to majority-black schools. But they do just as well there as in majority-white schools. [NPR / Anya Kamenetz]

• Anna Stubblefield says she fell in love with the severely disabled man she was hired to help. A jury concluded that she raped him.

  [NYT / Daniel Engber]

• We've gotten a lot better at talking about sexual consent. But it's still hard to discuss sex that's consensual but still sexist and bad.

  [NY Mag / Rebecca Traister]

• How much does it cost to live in a Nancy Meyers movie? Millions and millions of dollars, that's how much.

  [Slate / Daniel Hubbard]

• Japan has not one, not two, but eleven islands overrun with cats.

  [Quartz / Gwynn Guilford]

VERBATIM

"Usually, when the word 'texas'—as an adjective, most often without capitalization—appears in Norwegian, the context involves the phrase, 'det var helt texas,' which translates to, roughly, 'it was totally/absolutely/completely bonkers.'" [Texas Monthly / Dan Solomon]

• "When possible, refer all matters to committees, for ‘further study and consideration.’ Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five."

  [World War II manual for workplace sabotage, via Fortune / Anne Fisher]

• "Epic's HQ features a conference room tucked in a tree house. There's a Dungeons & Dragons-themed building with a moat and a replica drawbridge. One corridor is modeled to resemble a New York City subway car, complete with a statue of a homeless guy asleep on a bench."

  [Mother Jones / Pat Caldwell]

• "If I leave 8,000 bread crumbs around my door, I can’t blame anyone for knocking on it."

  [Joanna Newsom to The Fader / Alex Frank]

WATCH THIS

Scientists agree: Coffee naps are better than coffee or naps alone [YouTube / Joss Fong, Joseph Stromberg]

Vox / Joss Fong

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