The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Thursday that Joshua Williams "was sentenced ... to eight years in prison for starting a fire at a QuikTrip in Berkeley (a St. Louis suburb) after an officer-involved shooting there." The Dispatch apparently didn't think it important to tell readers that the crime spree which occurred after that shooting took place despite the fact that the suspect had pulled a gun on that officer.

I noted in a NewsBusters post a year ago that Williams' arrest on charges of "1st degree arson, 2nd degree burglary and misdemeanor theft," and his confession "to setting fires at the store in a videotaped interview" constituted a major establishment press embarrassment. You see, until then, outfits like the New York Times, MSNBC and others had, in the words of Ryan Lovelace at National Review, "depicted him as a hero of the summer protests" in Ferguson, Missouri.

At the math-challenged mess known as MSNBC, the network's "all new video experience" known as "Shift by MSNBC" tweeted a dire warning: "Latest UN report says humanity will warm the planet by 2.7˚C or roughly 37˚F." Though not revealed in the tweet, this warming will allegedly occur by 2100.

If MSNBC's conversion were true, it would of course mean that the earth as we know it is in dire straits. Fortunately for us, but unfortunately for the ignoramuses at MSNBC, 2.7 degrees Celsius equates to roughly 4.9 degrees Fahrenheit — and even that estimate, based on the track record of computer models which have been predicting the arrival of catastrophic global warming, looks (excuse the expression) cooked.

Michael Kinsley’s second-best-known contribution to political discourse, trailing only the “Kinsley gaffe,” is his observation that “the scandal isn't the illegal behavior -- the scandal is what's legal.” In a Thursday post, Steve Benen, a producer for MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show and the primary writer for the TRMS blog, sought to apply Kinsley’s wisdom to the congressional inquiry into the September 2012 Benghazi attack.

“The Benghazi Committee isn’t investigating a scandal. The Benghazi Committee is the scandal,” declared Benen (italics in original). “There’s been some debate in recent weeks about whether congressional Democrats should continue to participate in such an obvious farce. It’s a worthwhile question that deserves an answer.”

To Steve Benen, Obamacare is a high-quality dress shirt that Republicans treat like a greasy rag. Benen, a producer for MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, wrote in a Friday post on the TRMS blog that even though “every GOP prediction about the Affordable Care Act has been discredited,” conservatives keep trying to use it to tarnish other measures they oppose, including the Iran nuclear deal.

“If there is a compelling parallel between ‘Obamacare’ and the international nuclear agreement,” contended Benen, “it’s this: Republicans abandoned rational thought in their contempt for the idea, and despite pleas for an alternative solution to an important pressing problem, they offered nothing but slogans and cheap talking points.”

Cuban dissidents will not take part in Friday's formal ceremony opening the U.S. Embassy in Havana tomorrow, something that Secretary of State John Kerry is chalking up to a matter of respecting diplomatic protocol and a lack of space at the venue. But the controversy over the matter was omitted entirely from an NBC News article at MSNBC.com on Thursday evening.