Apparently, the establishment press is waiting for its marching orders on how to handle what an Investor's Business Daily editorial has already called a "scandal."

This one's a joint effort involving Hillary Clinton, Sidney Blumenthal, a recently deceased former CIA operative named Tyler Drumheller who worked with Blumenthal — and CBS News. As Mark Hemingway at the Weekly Standard reported Tuesday afternoon (i.e., now approaching two overnight news cycles ago), "Drumheller, the former chief of the CIA’s clandestine service in Europe who was working directly with Blumenthal as a member of Clinton’s spy network, was concurrently working as a consultant to CBS News and its venerable news program 60 Minutes." IBD's question, reacting to Hemingway's report: "Who is more corrupt, Clinton or the mainstream media?"

According to The New York Times, Will Dana, the managing editor who oversaw Rolling Stone’s trumped up UVA gang rape story, is leaving the magazine.

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.

The Associated Press, although it has apparently removed the primary photo involved from where it was posted last night at its APimages.com web site, is showing no remorse over having published what it has now admitted are five photos of 2016 Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz containing "guns seen on a wall in the background so that it appeared a pistol was pointed at Sen. Cruz’s head."

AP Media Relations Director Paul Colford, in a statement seen at the Politico and Mediaite which he has not mentioned at his Twitter feed and (as far as I can tell) hasn't posted at any official wire service page, wants us to know that they had no bad intentions — so would everyone please leave them alone so they can continue purveying their "unintended" filth? It's hard to have any reaction other than that to Colford's lame and completely unacceptable statement, which follows the jump.

In his first interview since being suspended and removed as anchor of NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams told Today co-host Matt Lauer on Friday that he “was not trying to mislead people” when he fabricated stories about news events he covered.