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.

Thanks to year-over-year declines in manufacturing orders, manufacturing shipments, and wholesale sales, along with bloated inventories, apologists for the current condition of the U.S. economy are down to three defenses supposedly demonstrating that all is still really well after yet another rough first quarter (once again excused away as due to supposedly historically awful winter weather).

One of the three is that the housing market, particularly for new homes, is in a genuine recovery. Effective today, we can scratch at least the new-home element of that claim. The Census Bureau told us today that seasonally adjusted new-home sales fell by 7 percent in June, after May's originally strong figure was also revised down by 5 percent. The raw data showed that the number of new homes sold in June — supposedly peak season for new home purchases — was the same as the number sold in February.

After five days, President Obama finally today ordered "that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds" and at other official federal locations until sunset on Saturday to honor the five victims of Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez's murder spree in Chattanooga, Tennessee last Thurday.

Though the White House will never admit it, Congress shamed the President into doing what he did by unilaterally choosing to fly the Capitol flag at half-mast earlier this morning. Obama's order referred to "the victims of the senseless acts of violence." Sadly, the more we learn, the more we understand that Abdulazeez didn't see it as "senseless" at all. Yet he, those who work for him in the Executive Branch, and the press continue to pretend.

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.

Nicholas Confessore and Maggie Haberman at the New York Times studiously avoided talking about Hillary Clinton's campaign spending in their front-page print edition story Thursday ("Hillary Clinton Lags in Engaging Grass-Roots Donors").

Mrs. Clinton hauled in $48.7 million, but she spent a stunning $18.7 million. As seen in a table accompanying the Times story, that's more than triple that of any other candidate in the race from either party — for someone with no worries about name recognition.