The use of specific density functionals calls into question the black-box nature of TD-DFT. If we are to rely on specific functionals anyway, then the functionalspecific parameterization of DFT/CIS does not seem like much of an additional limitation, and may actually be an advantage insofar as DFT/CIS may provide a balanced description of both core and valence excitations within a single method. (Functionals with 50% Hartree-Fock exchange exhibit larger errors for valence excitation energies as compared to the current state-ofthe-art in TD-DFT. ) Moreover, DFT/CIS has a specific advantage over TD-DFT when it comes calculating core-excitation spectra, due to its treatment Rydberg and charge-transfer states. Long-range corrected (LRC) functionals, based on range separation, can accurately describe both valence, Rydberg, and chargetransfer excitation energies. However, core-excitation energies remain too low, due to the absence of a large fraction of exact exchange at short range, leading to differential SIE between core and valence orbitals. Note that the c 1 parameter in DFT/CIS adds Hartree-Fock exchange to the CIS matrix elements.