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Fox News host Megyn Kelly admitted on Wednesday that the conservative network's coverage of that day's Benghazi hearings had been a "little lopsided" after Democratic lawmakers were repeatedly cut off for commercial breaks.

Following opening statements, Fox News aired all of the questions House Oversight Committee Chair Darrel Issa (R-CA) had for the witnesses he had called, but the network cut to former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton for reaction when Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MA) began presenting his questions.

Users on Twitter complained as they noticed a pattern each time Fox News cut away from the hearings.

"HILARIOUS Fox News taking a commerical break during Democrats #Benghazi questions...," Unitedliberals tweeted. "Fox News instead of airing Carolyn Maloney's questions during #Benghazi hearing they are RE-airing clips from 20 minutes ago #LOL."

"Fox News coverage @ Benghazi hearing/ no interruption of Republican spkrs, commercials and commentary ovr Democrats. Fair and balanced? BS!" Kevin Larkin wrote.

After over three hours of hearings, Fox News Megyn Kelly acknowledged that the coverage had not been fair and balanced.

"We're trying to get in our commercial breaks here and now we're getting a little lopsided in terms of the Democrats versus the Republicans, so we're going to try to rectify that for you after the break," she promised.

In fact, Fox News only provided another 10 minutes of live video from the hearings during the next hour. Instead, the network asked Bolton and Fox News host Oliver North to comment.

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Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Tuesday pointed to the example set by Democrats who refused to confirm John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations when he was asked if he would be willing to back Ambassador Susan Rice as secretary of state.

Speaking to reporters after meeting with Rice, Sens. Graham, John McCain (R-AZ) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) all seemed to escalate their opposition to the current U.S. ambassador to the United Nations over her public assessment of September attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya.

"I'm more disturbed now than I was before that the 16 September explanation about how four Americans died in Benghazi, Libya by Ambassador Rice, I think, does not do justice to the reality at the time and in hindsight clearly was completely wrong," Graham explained. "But here's the key, in real time, it was a statement disconnected from reality. If anybody had been looking at the threats coming out of Benghazi, Libya it was jump-out-at-you that this was an al Qaeda storm in the making."

The South Carolina Republican added that he was "very disappointed in our intelligence community" but Rice should have known better than to suggest that the attacks could have been related to an anti-Muslim video.

When asked about the possibility of supporting Rice to be the next secretary of state, Graham insisted that she could not be confirmed until Congress was provided more information from the FBI investigation into the Benghazi attack.

"I remember the John Bolton episode pretty well," he pointed out. "Our Democrat friends felt like John Bolton -- they didn't have the information needed to make an informed decision about Ambassador Bolton's qualifications -- John Bolton to be ambassador -- and Democrats dug in their heels and said, 'We're not going to vote, we're not going to consider this nomination until we get basic answers to our concerns.'"

"All I can tell you is that the concerns I have are greater today that they were before. We're not even close to getting the basic answers."

In 2005, President George W. Bush recess-appointed Bolton to the post of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations after Democrats filibustered the nomination because the White House refused to provide information about his mishandling of N.S.A documents and his questionable assessment of Syria's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs.

"This is about partisan politics, not documents," White House spokesperson Scott McClellan said at the time. "They have the information they need."

After Bolton was forced to resign as ambassador, Graham opined that the Democrats' filibuster "unfairly undermines President Bush's prerogative to appoint his own people to his team."

From Go Left TV's Ring of Fire, Mike Papantonio with a reminder after this Monday's final presidential debate, about just who Mitt Romney is surrounding himself with as foreign policy advisers. It's George W. Bush/Dick Cheney all over again.

Mike Papantonio talks about how Mitt Romney's pitiful performance in the foreign policy debate, and why it should scare American voters.

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With the final presidential debate on foreign policy coming up this Monday, Rachel Maddow again reminded us of the fact that Mitt Romney, with no real experience of his own, is just reassembling George Bush's foreign policy team and hoped that this is a topic that is finally discussed during the debate on Monday evening.

Maddow again featured too wrong to fail, Dan Senor, who's been traveling around working with vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan on the campaign trail for now. And she took the viewers through the long list of other Bushies who Mitt Romney has hired.

For more on that, here's some recommended reading.

From Ari Berman at The Nation: Mitt Romney's Neocon War Cabinet:

Romney is loath to mention Bush on the campaign trail, for obvious reasons, but today they sound like ideological soul mates on foreign policy. Listening to Romney, you’d never know that Bush left office bogged down by two unpopular wars that cost America dearly in blood and treasure. Of Romney’s forty identified foreign policy advisers, more than 70 percent worked for Bush. Many hail from the neoconservative wing of the party, were enthusiastic backers of the Iraq War and are proponents of a US or Israeli attack on Iran. Christopher Preble, a foreign policy expert at the Cato Institute, says, “Romney’s likely to be in the mold of George W. Bush when it comes to foreign policy if he were elected.” On some key issues, like Iran, Romney and his team are to the right of Bush. Romney’s embrace of the neoconservative cause—even if done cynically to woo the right—could turn into a policy nightmare if he becomes president. [...]

Romney knew little about foreign policy when he ran for president in 2008. An internal dossier of John McCain’s presidential campaign said at the time that “Romney’s foreign affairs resume is extremely thin, leading to credibility problems.” After being branded as too liberal by conservative GOP activists four years ago, Romney aligned himself with Bolton and other neocons in 2012 to protect his right flank. Today there’s little daylight between the candidate and his most militant advisers. “When you read the op-eds and listen to the speeches, it sounds like Romney’s listening to the John Bolton types more than anyone else,” says Brian Katulis, a senior fellow for national security at the Center for American Progress. (The Romney campaign’s openly gay foreign policy spokesman, Richard Grenell, who had been an indefatigable defender of Bolton as the latter’s PR flack in the Bush years, was forced to resign after harsh attacks by anti-gay conservatives.)

Bolton is one of eight Romney advisers who signed letters drafted by the Project for a New American Century, an influential neoconservative advocacy group founded in the 1990s, urging the Clinton and Bush administrations to attack Iraq. PNAC founding member Paula Dobriansky, leading advocate of Bush’s ill-fated “freedom agenda” as an official in the State Department, recently joined the Romney campaign full time. Another PNAC founder, Eliot Cohen, counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from 2007 to 2009, wrote the foreword to the Romney campaign’s foreign policy white paper, which was titled, perhaps not coincidentally, “An American Century.” Cohen was a tutor to Bush administration neocons. Following 9/11, he dubbed the war on terror “World War IV,” arguing that Iraq, being an “obvious candidate, having not only helped Al Qaeda, but…developed weapons of mass destruction,” should be its center. In 2009 Cohen urged the Obama administration to “actively seek the overthrow” of Iran’s government. Read on...

From Kimball at Daily KOS: The vital narrative of the next debate:

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Ouch. Brings back memories of Dick Cheney shooting his buddy in the face, or myriad other foreign policy errors by Bush-era neocons.

In an interview with CBS' Steve Kroft, the president said this about Mitt Romney's stupid remarks concerning the Libyan Embassy attacks:

OBAMA: There's a broader lesson to be learned here. Governor Romney seems to have a tendency to shoot first and aim later. And as president, one of the things I've learned is that you can't do that.

I don't necessarily think this is something one needs to learn as president. It seems like the prudent response for anyone who isn't interested in blowback over a stupid statement. Anyone who has made a mistaken offhand comment knows how it can play out in the wild. But in Romney's case, it was actually a prepared remark, and is being defended by the likes of John Bolton.

This reaction on Twitter seems to be an appropriate reminder for anyone who might still be ambivalent about Romney's comments:

A vote for Mitt is like a vote for John Bolton. Think about that.

— Andrew Hunt (@ahuntre) September 12, 2012

Yes, John Bolton is the architect of Romney's gaffes and Romney's policy. Shoot first, aim later.

Or in John McCain terms, Romney's "Lehman moment."

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As our friends at Raw Story noted this weekend, if President Obama is supposedly some "radical socialist" pushing an extreme "left wing agenda" as he's been painted by the the talking heads on the right, he's going a pretty lousy job at it, which was the subject of Bill Maher's New Rules segment this Friday evening.

Bill Maher: Obama ‘is a lousy socialist’:

Despite conservatives’ best efforts to paint Barack Obama as a “radical socialist,” Real Time host Bill Maher isn’t buying it.

Maher ended Friday night’s “New Rules” segment by calling out the Right’s ridiculous mischaracterization of the President.

“…Newt Gingrich called Obama the most radical Leftist President in history. Senator Marco Rubio called him the most divisive figure in American history. Michele Bachmann said Obama is the most radical President we have ever seen in the history of the country …John Bolton said Obama just doesn’t care about national security. Honestly, there are Mexican drug mules who don’t pull this much stuff out of their ass,” Maher said.

And as Mediaite noted, the rant started out as an attack on Ted Nugent and his recent tirades going after President Obama: Bill Maher: What Exactly Has Obama Done That Has Made Conservatives So Angry?:

Bill Maher finally got around to Ted Nugent in his final New Rule of the night, but used the rocker’s recent tirade against President Obama to ask the larger question about conservative outrage over the president. He argued that the country has really not changed that much from the George W. Bush era and, in fact, Obama has been making concessions that have not exactly pleased liberals. So what, Maher asked, are conservatives so angry about?

Here's more from Maher's rant in the segment above.

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On this Tuesday's The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart took some time to delve into the right wing's cognitive dissonance and their inability to give President Obama credit for anything, whether it be the killing of Osama bin Laden or Mitt Romney's recent ridiculous statement that he'll "take a lot of credit" for the auto industry coming back in America.

If anyone needed any more proof that the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer is more than just a little bit nuts and that he really hates Mitt Romney, you need look no further than his latest attack on the Republicans' presumptive presidential candidate, where he blasted Romney for taking his advice and ousting his openly gay spokesman, Richard Grenell.

Here's some background for anyone who hasn't been following this story. First we had Fischer going after Romney for hiring Grenell because he's openly gay: Bryan Fischer Launches Full-Scale Attack on Romney Campaign's Gay Spokesman:

As we noted earlier today, Bryan Fischer is positively livid that Mitt Romney's campaign hired Richard Grenell to serve as its foreign policy and national security spokesman because Grenell is openly gay.

So it was no surprise that Fischer dedicated a segment to discussing the issue today on his radio program, where he began by asserting that most gay men have hundreds, if not thousands, of "random, frequent, and anonymous sexual encounters and that becomes a significant issue when we're talking about appointing somebody to a post as sensitive as a spokesman for national security and foreign policy":

Later Fischer brought up the fact that the LDS Church opposes homosexuality and demanded to know whether Romney agreed with that position and, if so, explain why he would appoint an openly gay man to serve on his campaign. If Romney said he didn't agree with that position, then Fischer said there would be no reason for social conservatives to vote for him:

Then on May 1st, Fischer gets his head on a plate and Grenell resigns: Romney’s Openly-Gay Spokesperson Resigns After Facing Pressure From Anti-Gay Right Wing:

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It appears Newt Gingrich isn't done throwing more red meat to his base given the remarks he made on who he would want to appoint as Secretary of State were he to be elected president.

Gingrich: ‘I Will Ask John Bolton To Be Secretary Of State’:

At a forum hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich proclaimed that, if elected president, he would appoint former Bush administration U.N. ambassador John Bolton to be Secretary of State. Gingrich said he would require Bolton to restructure the U.S.’s entire diplomatic structure, and seek a more business-like atmosphere at State. Gingrich made the announcement to raucous applause [...]

The Senate refused to confirm the pugnacious Fox New contributor as U.N. envoy in 2006, forcing a recess appointment. Known for extremely hawkish positions and undiplomatic conduct, Bolton has maintained close ties to the Islamophobic right — but sometimes only when the money was good enough.

Here's more from Raw Story on Keith Olbermann's follow up on the topic with Steve Kornacki above -- Steve Kornacki explains tribalism of Gingrich’s support for Bolton:

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After some obnoxious partisan clips from Fox News of early reaction to the capture and subsequent death of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, Jon Stewart asked “Is there no Republican that can be gracious and statesmen-like in this situation?"

He then played clips of Republican Senators Marco Rubio, Chuck Grassley, and John McCain praising the French and the Brits.

Stewart's reaction was to throw his hands up in the air in utter disgust.

The segment ended with the kids on Fox & Friends lamenting the successful removal of a tyrant, capturing the absurdity quite nicely.