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So much for those claims that unlike their "opinion" shows in the evening, Fox' daytime programming is supposed to be "straight news" reporting, but then, we all knew that was ridiculous before this incident: Fox News Anchor Shouts Down Criticism Of Ryan Budget:

Fox News host Bill Hemmer tried to shout down Rep. Chris Van Hollen’s (D-MD) criticism of the GOP budget on Tuesday morning by loudly reading from Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) editorial promoting the newly-released Republican plan.

Hemmer dismissed Van Hollen’s claims that Ryan’s proposal would benefit the richest Americans while severely underfunding programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps as “talking points” and claimed that the plan would make the government “healthier.” Then, as Van Hollen explained that steep cuts in spending would undermine job growth, Hemmer proceeded to angrily read from Ryan’s Wall Street Journal opinion piece.

As Van Hollen told Hemmer at the end of the interview, reading from Ryan's Wall Street Journal editorial to argue his points isn't exactly "fair and balanced." Media Matters has more where they break down all of the Republican talking points Hemmer was regurgitating here: Fox Regurgitates False Talking Points To Defend Ryan Budget . It's a long list, so go read the whole thing.

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After a couple of her well known on-air brain farts, I wonder Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is the one that we should be worried about being on the road, not the deferred-action immigrants who are just trying to get to work in her state. Arizona Governor Compares Undocumented Immigrants To Drunks And Children:

Since President Obama issued an administrative directive allowing some undocumented young immigrants to temporarily remain in the country, states have adopted policies to ensure they have equal work opportunity. But on Thursday, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) reiterated her opposition to granting driver licenses to the eligible immigrants and compared them to children or people with a record of driving under the influence.

Speaking on Fox News, Brewer suggested that she would never issue licenses to undocumented immigrants because that’s what state law says, despite the fact that it was her executive order that interpreted state law to mean that:

BILL HEMMER (HOST): In June the White House announced a new plan if you were here in the U.S. before the age of 16, and you are younger than the age of 31, and you’ve been here at least five years, you can stay. That is the broad outline of his proposal passed over the summer. What you’re arguing is that the law of the land in Arizona if you’re illegal you don’t get the same rights as those who are legal, correct?

BREWER: The state is the one who licenses the people to be able to drive, it’s not the federal government. And we don’t license kids under 16. We don’t license DUI drivers. And our laws are very clear and I took an oath to uphold that.

[...] These laws have been passed for reasons of public safety; lawmakers believe that unlicensed adult immigrants are likely to drive anyway because they need to get to work, risking increased accidents and higher insurance costs. Public safety concerns, of course, run the opposite direction with children and serial drunk drivers, who cannot ever be trusted to drive safely and hence must be kept off the road.

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Another day on Fox, another day in GOP upside down land. On this Monday's edition of America's Newsroom, their so-called "national security analyst" KT McFarland gave their viewers a big dose of revisionist history, and continued their distortions and conspiracy theories over the attacks on our compound in Benghazi -- only this time with a new twist -- if President Obama had just acted more like George W. Bush with our Middle East policy, maybe he'd be having less problems there -- because we all know how well that worked out for everyone.

McFarland was pushing some of these same lies on Benghazi a month ago, as Media Matters documented here: Fox's McFarland Invents Facts To Accuse Obama Admin. Of Abandoning Americans In Benghazi:

Fox's K.T. McFarland claimed that no additional forces were sent to help Americans at the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, while it was attacked and claimed that this was "probably a political decision." But before McFarland made her claims on Fox, State Department officials had already said that when agents in the compound requested aid during the attack, additional forces from both Benghazi and Tripoli responded. Read on...

Of course, coming on Fox and lying is nothing new for McFarland. She was more than happy to play along and feign ignorance on the Romney 47 percent recordings with Greta Van Susteren back in September. She was heaping praise on Romney despite his lack of foreign policy experience and comparing him to St. Ronnie back in August. And she was giving wingnut Michele Bachmann cover for her part in the anti-Clinton protests in Egypt back in July.

Rough transcript of the exchange on Fox below the fold.

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It seems House Minority Leader Eric Cantor, like his cohort John Boehner, is still living in fantasy-land when it comes to their ability to "repeal" the Affordable Care Act. Here he is on Fox this Monday, saying he wants "Obamacare" to be "on the table" during the upcoming deft and deficit negotiations.

Republican Leader Wants Deficit-Reducing Obamacare ‘On The Table’ In Debt Talks:

Echoing House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) recent op-ed calling for a repeal of Obamacare through “oversight,” Cantor claimed that the law is a bloated entitlement and burden on the federal deficit that must be on the table during budget talks:

BILL HEMMER (HOST): In these negotiations, is Obamacare being negotiated?

CANTOR: If the president is serious about joining us and fixing the problem, he ought to be putting Obamacare on the table. There is no question in my mind, that is the largest expansion of government programs that we’ve seen.

HEMMER: Can you say at the moment that that is being talked about?

CANTOR: All I can say is that the president has got to get serious and the Speaker is correct, that Obamacare is such an expansion of government spending and involvement in folks’ lives it ought to be on the table.

HEMMER: You wonder what he is willing to concede on that.

While Republicans have been full-throated in parroting claims that Obamacare is not fiscally viable, the fact is that the health reform law actually reduces the deficit by billions in the next decade and by over $1 trillion in the decade after that, and repealing Obamacare would consequently increase the national debt while taking away Americans’ health benefits.

As the post at Think Progress also noted, Cantor is wrong about the law's support which has been gaining in popularity in recent months.

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Add Fox News host Mike Huckabee to the list conservatives who are feigning astonishment at Joe Biden's aggressive demeanor during Thursday night's vice presidential debate.

"I thought that Joe Biden came across as a guy that you meet at a cocktail party or some political event, an obnoxious drunk who is loud and boisterous and interrupts every conversation," Huckabee told Fox News host Bill Hemmer on Friday. "He is just the kind of guy you want to get away from as quickly as you can."

"It was just boorish behavior for the first half," the former Arkansas governor added. "I think at some point during the debate, he took Ritalin and he started calming down in the end. But it is not the kind of thing that is very helpful to Joe Biden and his image with voters in the heartland of America who are taught to be polite. And he just wasn't."

Hemmer suggested that Biden had started to feel entitled because he could "walk into any room in D.C. and the waters part for you."

"I think Joe Biden was coached," Huckabee explained. "I think he was coached to try to come across that he was the statesmen, that he was the elder and Paul Ryan was not ready for primetime. And I think he overplayed it."

"It was so over the top that it was as if he was programmed that no matter what Paul Ryan said, he was to snicker at him, to make it look like the answers were small and unimportant. And the way it came across particularly about the Iranian situation, I was thinking, there's not one family in Israel putting their kids in bed who are laughing about the idea of being vaporized by an Iranian nuclear device."

Biden has been candid in the past when explaining why he has never taken a drink in his life.

"There are enough alcoholics in my family," he said in 2008.

(h/t: Think Progress)

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Last week, it was Mike Huckabee comparing the latest trumped up non-scandal to Watergate and suggesting that President Obama should be impeached over the handling of the embassy attack in Libya. Now we've got flamethrower Rep. Marsh Blackburn making the same comparison -- Republican Lawmaker: Obama’s Handling Of Libya Is ‘Worse Than Watergate’:

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) joined the chorus of Republicans criticizing President Obama’s response to the violence in Libya on Monday, going so far as to suggest that the administration’s handling of the situation is worse than Watergate — the scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon:

BLACKBURN: I think this is an issue — Benghazi-gate is the right term for this. This is very, very serious, probably more serious than Watergate. And to call this a response to a video when it was obviously a terrorist attack — and when you read some of the documentation on this, and you know that there has been other sites and locations that have bind attack in Libya, when you know that the Libyan government felt there was something getting ready to transpire.

Fox News, Republican lawmakers, and conservative pundits have for weeks criticized U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice for initially characterizing the attack as a “spontaneous reaction” to a movie trailer disparaging the Prophet Muhammed. Since then, however, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, and even White House Spokesperson Jay Carney have all used the word “terrorist” to describe the attack. Obama himself attributed the violence to terrorism during a September 12 address at the Rose Garden.

Ed Kilgore at Washington Monthly has more on how this is part of the Romney campaign's new strategy that they think is going to turn the election around for them -- Benghazi Truthers:

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Who could have seen this coming? Here we go with the next step in the ridiculous, drummed up, non-scandal, Benghazi-gate that the right wingers have all been losing their minds over for the last couple of weeks at Fox -- Huckabee Suggests Obama Should Be Impeached Over Libya Incident:

Fox News host and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) compared the administration’s handling of the consulate attack in Libya to Watergate, during an appearance on the network Friday morning, and hinted that the president should be impeached for not immediately attributing the violence to terrorism.

“We have been flat-out lied to,” Huckabee told Fox’s Bill Hemmer. “They know they lied. As if airplanes crashing into the World Trade Center said those were just accidents. Anybody with two eyes and an IQ above plant life knows what happened in Libya was not a spontaneous reaction to a 13 minute video on YouTube”:

HUCKABEE: It was a planned orchestrated attack led by terrorists, terrorists, Bill. And this White House has to explain why it hasn’t owned up to that. Why it can’t say it. I think frankly, if this issue really gets traction that it deserves, and let it say it deserves, go back. Richard Nixon was forced out of office because he lied. And because he covered some stuff up. I will be blunt and tell you this. Nobody died in Watergate. We have people who are dead because of this. There are questions to be answered and Americans ought to demand to get answers. [...]

HEMMER: Just one more thing here. What you’re describing, comparing events of today to Watergate.

HUCKABEE: I sure am….Bill, i’m not saying this just out of some political interest. I’m saying that our trust as a nation is built on our ability to know that when our president, whoever he is, Democrat or Republican, looks us in the eye and tells us something, we ought to know he is telling us the truth.

Fox News, Republican lawmakers, and conservative pundits have for weeks hinted at an administration cover-up, naming it Benghazi-gate, and alleging that Ambassador Susan Rice misled Americans, when she initially claimed that the attacks were a “spontaneous reaction” to a movie trailer disparaging the Prophet Muhammed.

And while some administration officials expressed concern that “the White House began pushing the line that the attack was spontaneous and not the work of terrorists,” officials began labeling the incident the work of terrorism after investigating the incident. Read on...

Media Matters has more on the attack here -- Myths And Facts About The Benghazi Attack And Protests In The Middle East :

Right-wing media have pushed numerous myths about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and protests in the Middle East, from distorting the Obama administration's response to the attacks to misleading about the nature of security at the Benghazi consulate.

Check out the full report at their site.

And here's more from Steve at No More Mister Nice Blog -- No, Obama is Not Going to Lose the Election Because of Benghazi:

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It seems the Romney campaign is doing their best to lower expectations for the presidential debates, which start next week. After first engaging in a bit of "poll trutherism" when asked by Fox's Bill Hemmer what he thought of Romney trailing in all of the battleground states, spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom was asked about a recent article which called the debates "do or die" for Romney. Here's how he responded.

Fehrnstrom: Obama Will Turn Debates Into ‘90-Minute Attack Ad’:

Eric Fehrnstrom, a senior adviser in the Romney campaign, said on Fox News Thursday that President Obama will turn the presidential debates into a "90-minute attack ad." Fehrnstrom also lowered debate expectations, saying Obama has had more experience in debates than Romney.

This coming from the same campaign which didn't have any qualms about literally carpet-bombing their opponents in the Republican primary race with negative ads. If their campaign is worried about supplying material for negative attack ads, I'd say it's just a little bit late now. There's enough out there already to keep the Obama campaign ad producers busy for months on end.

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Republican strategist Karl Rove appeared devastated on Thursday as he was forced to declared that the Supreme Court had given President Barack Obama a "boost" when they refused to strike down his health care reform law.

"It would be an extraordinary step," Rove, appearing to be partially in denial, told Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer just after the court's decision was handed down. "I mean, the court tosses it out on the grounds that it was sold to the country on, that the government had the right to compel everybody to purchase insurance as a condition of being alive and instead upholds it on the basis that the administration was unwilling to make at the time, which is this is a tax."

"If this is actually the decision, it's a boost for the president," he added softly. "But it doesn't make the controversy go away. In fact, it probably enhances the controversy."

The Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision on Thursday ruled that the Affordable Care Act -- including the mandate that individuals be forced to buy insurance -- was constitutional.

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The publisher of a conservative New Hampshire newspaper says Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has the best chance against President Barack Obama in 2012 because former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney "sort of represents the 1 percent."

"We would rather back someone with whom we may sometimes disagree than one who tells us what he thinks we want to hear," The New Hampshire Union Leader declared in a front-page editorial Sunday.

Appearing on Fox News Monday, publisher Joe McQuaid explained that statement was a dig at Romney.

"We don't think he's got it," McQuaid remarked. "We think he's the managerial type, but he's sort of a blank slate and he's going to go with the winds too much."

"I think -- and this is crazy, but so are we -- that Gingrich is going to have a a better time in the general election than Mitt Romney. I think it's going to be Obama's 99 [percent] versus the 1 percent, and Romney sort of represent the 1 percent."

McQuaid has a point that with a net worth of $250 million, Romney embodies the 1 percent of wealthiest Americans.

Gingrich, however, also has a net worth of at least $6.7 million, putting him well within the top 1 percent.

Romney reportedly earned $9.3 million in 2010, while Gingrich made a more modest $2.6 million that same year.

Over the summer, Gingrich explained an interest-free $1.5 million line of credit at Tiffany's by saying it was "a normal way of doing business."

"As a private citizen who has done well, I think I'm allowed to pick and choose what I prefer doing," he told CBS host Bob Schieffer.