As I posted earlier today, Jon Stewart shredded Sean Hannity last night over his hypocritical adulation for Cliven Bundy, the lawbreaking rancher in Nevada who refuses to pay his grazing fees or move his cattle off federal land. Tonight, Hannity answered back. I think it’s best summed up by saying that Stewart must have struck a deep nerve. Hard.

In his takedown (video below), Stewart showed – via clips of Hannity, himself – that Hannity was a staunch believer in obeying the law when it suited him before he was against obeying the law when it suited him.

Rather than explain away the apparent hypocrisy, Hannity whined that Stewart used clips “dating back more than eight years.” Hannity also promised that he would do what Stewart and his writers “clearly are incapable of doing: that‘s telling the real story behind the Bundy family standoff with the federal government.”

Today, it was revealed that one of Bundy’s justifications for his lawlessness – his supposedly ancestral history at the ranch – doesn’t quite match the facts.  Or to put it another way, Bundy seems to be a liar as well as a moocher. But that revelation was not included in Hannity’s “real story” in this or any other segment tonight.

In this segment, Hannity told the “real story” of his own comments about the Bundy standoff. But it was more or less the same whitewashed version he presented last night, while playing the victim of MSNBC criticism over his Bundy coverage. Hannity played clips of himself objecting to the “lack of proportionality” by the federal government.

What Hannity never played were clips of his deliberately provocative comments, in which he all but outright suggested that Bundy and his militia-type supporters start an armed conflict with the government.

Laughably, Hannity complained The Daily Show “just can’t give their viewers the facts. They have to spin the story.” Even more hiliariously, Hannity accused Stewart of being “kind of obsessed with this program” and said, “Remember he was begging me to stay in New York?”

Yes, I do remember. That was another devastating takedown of Hannity that could best be described as satire. But Hannity selectively edited The Daily Show video for his audience so as to remove most of the implicit criticism.

“What is Jon Stewart’s position here?” Hannity asked about the Bundy situation, as if Stewart were ducking an issue Hannity was courageously confronting. But Stewart makes his position very clear in the video below:

If you want to challenge the amount of federal land the government owns in the state of Nevada, fine. Make your case to the voters. If you want to challenge the concept of grazing fees, fine. But Hannity’s puffery and armed friends don’t make you a patriot.

Also, in typical Hannity fashion, he moved on to “defend” himself by smearing others. In this case, it was Stewart for not being tough enough on President Obama. Just pay no attention to all the times Stewart has come down hard on Obama.

But not in the way Hannity wants:

Did Jon Stewart ask Barack Obama about his friendship, his unapologetic domestic terrorist – let’s see: Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn?

Hannity also complained that Stewart’s 2010 Rally to Restore Sanity included Cat Stevens, now known as Yusuf Islam. Islam, Hannity said, “infamously is unapologetic for endorsing a fatwa, meaning ‘to kill,’ a novelist by the name of Salman Rushdie when he wrote the Satanic Verses.”

What Hannity didn’t say is that Stewart has said he regrets hosting Islam, was unaware of his endorsement of the Rushdie fatwa and said he would not have done it had he known. The fatwa was in 1989 and Islam has long since claimed he never meant it or at least has changed his stance. As for Ayers and Dohrn, they turned straight in 1980 and have been upstanding members of their community for decades. Long before President Obama, born in 1961, met them.

But while Hannity seems to think we should disregard what he said eight years ago – whether he has renounced his comments or not – he also seems to think we should act as though the explicitly renounced mistakes of others happened just yesterday. Even when they are decades old.