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As we already discussed here, House Oversight Committee ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings appeared on CNN this weekend, and told host Candy Crowley that if Chairman Darrell Issa did not release all of the testimony from the IRS employees that their committee interviewed, he was going to do it -- and that the testimony given clearly shows that the White House was not involved in directing the IRS to target any tea party groups.

Of course, that doesn't fit the narrative they're still trying to push at Fox, so how do they handle it? By taking Rep. Cummings out of context and pretending not to know that the employee who directed his employees to look at these groups is 21-year veteran of the IRS and a self-described conservative Republican.

This interview on America's Newsroom was pathetic by even Fox's "standards" in that the lies are so bad you can tell host Bill Hemmer and his guest Stephen Hayesa are so full of it, they're having trouble pretending they believe the garbage they're shoveling here.

And as Media Matters noted, it's not the only segment like this one they aired this Monday: Fox Ignores Details To Dismiss Congressman's Claim That IRS Targeting Mystery Is Solved:

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You've got to love this logic from the right wingers like Malkin who supported this domestic spying program under Bush suddenly having a problem with the spying and data mining under Obama -- now it's completely different because the Kenyan usurper terrorist lover is doing it.

On this Thursday's Fox & Friends, resident flame thrower Michelle Malkin gave the right's latest sorry excuse for why this was acceptable under Bush but not Obama and that is, Obama declared the "war on terror is over"... even though that's not exactly what he said.

Apparently in Malkin's world, as long as you're willing to declare perpetual war against a tactic, spying on Americans who haven't done anything wrong is perfectly acceptable. And of course, as always, there's that other rule, which is IOKIYAR.

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Fox Business host John Stossel on Thursday declared that government programs should be cut based on the false assertion that "no one" died of starvation in the Great Depression before the modern "welfare state."

Stossel told the hosts of Fox & Friends that he had taken his cameras out on the streets of New York and no one he spoke to had any idea about how to fix the nation's growing national debt.

"You cut whole departments," the Fox Business host explained. "Why do we have a Commerce Department? Commerce just happens! Agriculture, farmers do that! You don't need bureaucrats."

He added that the Department of Education was also unnecessary.

"Isn't that part of what the government does in a lot of people minds?" Fox News host Steve Doocy asked. "They need to help people rather than let people help themselves?"

"And when people are needy you want them [to get] help," Stossel agreed. "But think about the [Great] Depression. That was before there was any welfare state at all. How many people starved? No one."

"Right, good point," Doocy agreed.

During the Great Depression in 1933, then-President Herbert Hoover (R) had told reporters that "nobody is actually starving... The hoboes, for example, are better fed than they have ever been. One hobo in New York got ten meals in one day."

But according to historians Steven Mintz and Sara McNeil, the number of cases of starvation in New York City alone had increased from 20 in 1931 to 110 in 1934.

And malnutrition was a much larger problem. One 1933 study of 514 children in New York found that more than one-third were in "poor" or "very poor" health.

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Oh look! It's Fox's favorite Brit and the Brown-Haired Guy Who Isn't Steve Doocy doing what they do best on this Friday's Fox & Friends -- lying and fearmongering.

This works out so well for them. They get to bash the EPA, the IRS and "big government," pull out their favorite crucified abused conservative victim card and make excuses for why their candidate got his ass kicked in the last presidential election.

Jason Easley has more on the huge game of projection we had going on here: Fox News Claims That US Government Rigged The 2012 Election For Obama:

Fox News has invented a new reason why Mitt Romney lost the election. They are claiming that government bureaucrats unfairly tilted the playing field for Obama in the 2012 election.

On Fox and Friends Stuart Varney said, “It’s bigger than the IRS. There’s a suspicion here that the machinery of government has been used to suppress conservatives. That the election in fact was not a level playing field. There was a tilt, and it was orchestrated by government bureaucrats. You just mentioned the EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, almost always when liberal groups apply for a waiver of document fees, they were granted that waiver. Conservative groups had to pay. Now that’s a form of financial pressure on conservative groups. Then you’ve got disaster relief funds. Four states, red states run by Republican governors, were denied disaster relief funds. Then you’ve got the IRS. It’s not just the tax exempt office. Conservative supporters, supporters of conservative groups, they were audited. Republican donors, audited. And there’s a consistent pattern here. So Republicans, conservatives are looking back over the last four years and saying there is a pattern. There is a pattern of going after conservatives which affected the election. The government bureaucracy was used as a hammer in a way that it was not supposed to be used.”

Brian Kilmeade claimed that it was hard to argue with these examples because there are actual living breathing people that have proof of it.

It is really easy to argue with Varney’s examples, because they are either not true or come from dubious sources.

Go read the rest of the post for more and his breakdown of why their claims don't hold water and as he noted, President Obama won the election despite Republicans' best efforts to suppress as many Democratic voters as possible across the country.

Don't look for this stupidity to end any time soon folks. They've been using the IRS "scandal" to do everything from attacking "Obamacare" to letting every conservative crackpot who has ever been audited to claim they had a big target on their head with no proof whatsoever, to claiming that the union members who work at the IRS were helping President Obama get re-elected. It's never going to end as long as there's a Democrat in the White House. Never.

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This is one subject that Saturday Night Live can never spend too much time mocking IMHO, and that's the several hour long debacle that manages to make even the rest of cable "news" look good by comparison, Fox & Friends. Their cold open began with the group opining over President Obama calling NBA player Jason Collins, who just came out, a hero -- and if you are unfortunate enough to actually watch any of Fox's programming, it's sadly not too far off from the carping from the talking heads on that network.

They then moved onto whether New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg might have any luck with pushing for more gun control regulation and whether everyone in the country is ready to listen to a "northeastern Jewish billionaire" on the topic -- and they had the crew mocking him for his attempted large soda ban.

There's enough material on Fox every day that Saturday Night Live could make an entire hour out of all of their programming and not just mocking Fox & Friends. For that matter, if anyone wanted to devote an entire network to mocking them -- they would never run out of material as well. There are so many things wrong with the crap that network pumps out on a daily basis that the list is endless.

Sadly, that would mean subjecting someone to watching them 24/7 first to come up with the material, and I wouldn't wish that punishment on anyone.

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From this Saturday's Fox & Friends, regular guest and host of his own show on the weekends, Mike Huckabee is very sad that there are people "on the left" who are making him feel bad about being able to demonize Muslims. Here's what he said while discussing the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing:

HUCKABEE: But they still don't want to just come out and say, we have a serious threat because of radicalized Islam. Not all Muslims are terrorists, for heaven sakes. No one I know of suggests that. But it's just, it's dishonest and disingenuous for us to continue to say, right after the bombing, this is probably the work of some right-wing anti-tax, anti-government person when no one knew.

And there was never like an on-air apology from some of the people who made those ridiculous speculations. That's why I think that it's very important that Americans understand, we do have a threat. That threat is jihad. It is not about what we've done to them. That's nonsense. It is a fundamental part of their doctrine to believe that we're all infidels and that we must die. [...]

Well, take it a step further. Christians who are still, you know, holding to old fashioned traditions about marriage for example are cast as bigoted homophobes. Now, what is the position in Islam regarding homosexuality? Not same sex marriage. Just homosexuality. It's death by stoning.

I don't understand. We have a very harsh, radical, carried out kind of zaniness going on. Same thing with honor killings.

CARLSON: If these radicals came to the United States, the first people to be executed would be liberals.

HUCKABEE: Yeah.

CARLSON: So I don't understand why they don't perceive the threat for themselves.

HUCKABEE: There is no rationale for the way in which the left basically treats Islam in the public square. It just doesn't make any sense.

Sorry, but there are plenty of reasons for treating every citizen, no matter what their religion, the same under the law and it has nothing to do with what "liberals" want, unless of course you think just wanting everyone to obey our laws is somehow a "liberal value."

And to Huckabee's remarks, he wants to pretend we've never had any "Christian" terrorists like abortion clinic bombers doing harm to or killing their fellow citizens. Huckabee needs to go take a good long look in the mirror when it comes to domestic terrorism. He's right up there with Bill-O when it comes to whipping up the hatred with the extremists on that issue.

In the mean time, he's happy to play the victim card for his audience while pretending Muslims are the only people capable of committing acts of domestic terrorism.

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I'm quite sure that there are plenty of constructive things you could say about President Obama's recent trip to Mexico and what policies would actually benefit the citizens of both countries, such as our trade laws and our drug policies among other things, but you weren't going to find that on this Saturday's Fox & Friends.

Hosts Tucker Carlson, Alisyn Camerota and Clayton Morris opened up the segment by using the speech as an opportunity to trot out the old "apology tour' attacks. Then after playing a portion of President Obama's speech where he said this:

In the United States, we recognize our responsibilities as well. We understand that the root cause of much of the violence here—and so much suffering for many Mexicans— is the demand for illegal drugs, including in the United States. [...]

We also recognize that most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States.

...they of course had to bring up one of Fox's other favorite faux scandals, the trumped up Fast and Furious failed gun trafficking sting. And for good measure, heaven forbid a former Mexican diplomat and writer that Obama quoted in his speech said something critical about the United States thirty years ago, so therefore Obama must be siding with anti-American radicals.

They did their best to twist what the president said in his speech as well, and claimed that his comments about the drug trade and guns meant he was blaming the United States for all of their problems, which, as anyone can read for themselves, is not exactly what he said to the audience there, to put it charitably. He said we shared some responsibility for those specific problems.

As I already said, there are plenty of legitimate items to criticize about our relationship with Mexico. You'd never know it listening to the garbage being spewed by these clowns.

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Retired professional boxer Mike Tyson on Monday briefly shocked Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade by saying that he was "looking forward" to paying taxes to the federal government, but hoped to save money with "Obamacare."

The former heavyweight champion told Kilmeade that he was hoping to pay off millions in back taxes with a one-man show about his life.

"I'm so proud to be in this," Tyson explained. "I look forward to paying off my taxes and paying off my country, because that's my duty. I know they say that's legal extortion, but listen, I'm living in this country and if I got to pay taxes, that's the money that I paid for my life on Earth."

As Tyson was speaking, Kilmeade appeared momentarily dumbstruck, eyes wide and mouth open.

"I've got the biggest liberal family in the world," Tyson continued. "But I had the more money when Bush and Reagan was president! Oh I shouldn't -- my wife's going to kill me for that."

"Bush and Reagan had this idea that you should keep your money," Kilmeade said.

"Yeah, I'd like that to work for me," Tyson replied. "I'm going to work on that one to with this Obama administration, see can this Obamacare help us keep some money."

(h/t: Twitter/@igorvolsky)

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If you need any proof that no bad deed goes unrewarded by our corporate media, you need look no further than this attention whore. Here's how you're rewarded for violent rhetoric and promoting torture on twitter these days.

New York lawmaker: I would torture an American citizen:

New York state Sen. Greg Ball (R) on Monday night reiterated his belief that Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be tortured even though he is a U.S. citizen.

During a tense interview, CNN’s Piers Morgan repeatedly asked Ball whether he was OK with torturing American citizens. While he refused to condone torture as a government policy, he said he was not opposed to personally torturing American citizens such as Tsarnaev.

“I’m telling you as Greg Ball, if personally put in a room with anybody from the most current scumbags to Osama bin Laden I’m telling you what I would do. As far as policy of the United States, you’ve got to take it up with your man Obama,” Ball explained. [...]

The New York Republican has repeatedly defended his support of torture since tweeting about it over the weekend.

In a separate interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday night, Ball remarked he was speaking “from my heart” and acknowledged his comments might not help his reelection.

Morgan's follow up with Alan Dershowitz, who defended torture in some instances wasn't a whole lot better than his interview with Ball, who walked off of the set after this segment even though he said he'd come back. Note to Piers Morgan if you're going to have someone like this clown on your show again:

Torture does not work and provides unreliable information.

Torture is not consistent with our laws or with our Constitution and it's a war crime.

Torture does not save lives.

Torture does not serve our national interests.

And maybe you could ask this guy if he ever comes on again why we don't allow the police to beat confessions out of citizens on a daily basis and why our courts won't accept confessions obtained under those conditions as evidence. This interview wasn't quite as pitiful as the ones he did on Faux "News," but that's a pretty low bar to hurdle.

You can let him know what you think of his remarks on twitter here.

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The hosts of Fox & Friends on Friday suggested that fast food workers should stop striking for higher pay and get a second job because the minimum wage "was never meant to be a career wage."

On Thursday, hundreds of restaurant workers in New York City went on strike to demand a wage of at least $15 an hour. The current median wage of $9 an hour puts workers at about $4,500 lower that the poverty threshold of $23,000 for a family of four. The current minimum wage in New York City is $7.25.

"Here's the deal, you're a minimum wage worker, that's an entry-level salary," Fox News host Brian Kilmeade opined on Friday. "If you're good, you'll get a raise."

"Minimum wage was never meant to be a career wage. If you work hard you will get higher -- you will get more money. Here's the other thing, as hard as it is in some cases, because you are a single mom or a single dad, you've got to get another job. You've got to get another job on top of that so you have two incomes."

"Brian you hit on the nose, I think, the key thing," co-host Steve Doocy remarked. "If it is a minimum wage job, expect to get paid the minimum wage."

"The National Restaurant Association said that they provide 13 million jobs, and those jobs could be jeopardized across the country if the minimum wage goes up," he added. "The industry says one of the best paths to achieving the American dream is to start with an entry level, minimum-wage job that is minimum wage."

(h/t: Media Matters)