In a speech at a Republican Lincoln Day dinner in West Virginia earlier this week, Murray Energy Corp. founder and CEO Robert Murray decried the Obama administration's determination to, as described at the financial news site SNL.com (to be clear, no relation to Saturday Night Live), "bypass the states and their utility commissions, the U.S. Congress and the Constitution in favor of putting the U.S. EPA in charge of the nation's electric grid."

In the establishment press, Murray's speech was only covered in a single snarky paragraph by Darren Goode at the Politico titled "Don't Hold Back Now" — obviously attempting to paint Murray as unreasonable and extreme — and a writeup at the Wheeling (WV) Intelligencer. After all, what does Murray know? He's only the head of the largest company in an industry which is still responsible for fueling 39 percent of America's electrical grid, and the majority of it in many states. Who would want to give him any visibility, as if he has anything valuable to say? Well, I do.

On Friday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest held his first press briefing after the massacre of then-four, now-five Americans "at a military recruiting office and a Navy-Marine operations center a few miles apart" in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

A mere three minutes into that briefing, thanks to the Associated Press's Darlene Superville, he was already on another topic: President Obama's upcoming weekend father-daughter outing in New York City. The folks at Fox News's "Outnumbered" show were watching live. Quite understandably, the program's Harris Faulkner took strong exception to Superville's chosen question.

Journalists and lefitsts (but I repeat myself) are hopping mad.

They're not mad at President Obama for failing to make freeing American hostages held by Iran an issue in negotiations with that nation. Instead, they're furious at Major Garrett of CBS News for daring to ask Dear Leader a question about it, even though in the process Garrett got a clearly irritated Obama to make news by admitting, and then trying to justify, his team's failure to make such an effort.

One would think that a presidential candidate falsely claiming that she never was subpoenaed would be bigger news story than people in the opposing party criticizing that candidate after the fact for her obviously false statement. As Tim Graham at NewsBusters noted late this afternoon, that's not the case. This post contains several more examples.

At CNN, the network's own Brianna Keilar, who conducted the interview during which Hillary Clinton denied ever receiving a congressional committee's subpoena for her work-related emails, "sharply criticized the Democratic presidential contender’s performance" for failing to answer several questions satisfactorily and for not even "engaging" when asked others. Despite Keilar's disappointment, beat reporters Jeff Zeleny and Tom LoBianco at CNN.com went light on Mrs. Clinton, and highlighted Republican critics.

To be clear, professional sports broadcasting is thankfully long past the time when the announcers would annoyingly sugarcoat dismal player performances. (Though I would prefer that those who actually played the game engage in this criticism, and that play-by-play announcers who haven't try to stay away from it.)

So it would have been somewhat acceptable if veteran NBC broadcaster Bob Costas, as he was doing the play-by-play for a Friday night Chicago Cubs-St. Louis Cardinals game, had merely stated the obvious, i.e., that Cubs relief pitcher Pedro Strop, after giving up a home run, hitting a batter, and walking one while only getting one out, had an "atrocious" outing. But that's not what he said. Costas ripped into Strop for (imagine that) looking up and pointing to the heavens as he headed towards the Cubs' dugout.