As part of his NRA Gun Appreciation Night last night, Sean Hannity also brought on a telegenic woman to showcase demonstrate the magnificence of semi-automatic weapons. She started with the AR-15 "that everyone is wanting to ban." She forgot to mention that it's the same gun used in the Newtown and Aurora massacres last year.

It was Gun Appreciation Day on Hannity tonight. And part of showing his appreciation was to help out NRA head and gun-rights martyr, Wayne LaPierre. LaPierre has not exactly been a popular guy lately, even in right wing circles. First, he came under criticism for his press conference after the Newtown school shootings, then for his subsequent Meet the Press appearance. Now he’s under attack for the NRA ad attacking President Obama’s gun proposals. But on Hannity, LaPierre was nothing but a regular Joe standing up for the rights of America’s other regular fellas under attack by gun-hating, hypocritical elites. UPDATED: The NRA lied and got a pass from Fox.

Yesterday, in his nightly lesson (Tip of the Day) for his audience who are obviously too stupid to take charge of their own lives, Bill O'Reilly cautioned his viewers about believing what they see on the internet because "there are no standards in cyberspace" where "anything goes."  He then used this premise to launch into a personal attack against a Talking Points Memo (TPM) website writer. After accusing Josh Michal Marshall's website of stealing their name from his "Talking Points Memo," O'Reilly launched into a personal attack on one of their writers for stating that O'Reilly "once got into an on-air screaming match with Geraldo Rivera over whether to blame drunk driving deaths on illegal immigration..." In this case, the writer was telling the truth. Bill, not so much.

Megyn Kelly was too cute by half today as she feigned balance at the same time that she promoted a poll which found that 36 percent of Americans believe President Obama is hiding something about his background and early life. Completely ignoring the role her own network played in promoting such beliefs, she repeatedly suggested that President Obama is to blame for Americans' suspicions.

The term "jackbooted thug" has its origins in opposition to totalitarianism. Dem. Rep. John Dingell used the term "jackbooted American fascists" when he called for reform of the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco. Jackbooted and thug were put together by the NRA's Wayne LaPierre when, in 1995, he referred to government agents as jack booted thugs. Former President George HW Bush resigned from the NRA over this nomenclature. Today, it is used to describe the views of radical, anti-gun control zealots who actually believe that the Obama administration is getting ready to send out jackbooted thugs to take away their weapons. If you think that it's a cartoonish stereotype, much like the "black helicopter crowd," and that folks don't actually believe that, think again. Fox News' ace culture clubber, devout Christian, and raging homophobe Todd Starnes would appear to actually believe that the thugs are on their way!

Liz Cheney visited the Hannity show last night where she joined her voice to the Fox News chorus of blaming President Obama and Benghazi for the hostage-taking in Algeria. For a few right-wing bonus points, she threw in an “Obama loves Muslims more than Americans” suggestion. 

Apparently, Karl Rove's exile from Fox News is over. Fox News announced today that it has renewed his contract so that he will remain a contributor through the 2016 election.

Regular readers know I'm pro Democrats appearing on Fox. But going on the payroll? Not so much. But even before the news came out that Dennis Kucinich joined Fox News as a paid contributor, I've had my concerns about Kucinich's appearances on Fox.

Texas Congressman Steve Stockman got quite a bit of press recently for vowing to seek impeachment if President Obama tried to use executive orders to enact gun control. But when Greta Van Susteren pressed him about it on Tuesday night, he hedged and evaded. No, he wouldn’t rush to impeachment, he’d try all available tools. And the issue isn’t gun control, not really, it’s the President bypassing Congress. And he wouldn't say who his allies in Congress were. 

Didn’t you just know that the moment the news arrived that some Americans had been taken hostage by an Al Qaeda-linked group in Algeria that Fox News scrambled to figure out a way to blame the Obama administration? Well, in a neat twofer, they got the job done by suggesting Fox’s favorite faux scandal of the year, Benghazi, was the cause. Never mind that even Fox News has reported that the terrorist attack was in retaliation for France's military action in Mali.