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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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With news outlets sending out conflicting reports on whether a suspect had been arrested in connection to the Boston Marathon bombing or not, Megyn Kelly decided to go off on a rant about not blaming the media:

Listen. Right now Mark we are talking about a media story, because the media is all over the board on this. But this is not about the media. This is about someone, who unleashed hell on our citizens on Monday afternoon when people were gathering for a sporting event, trying to support their loved ones and wound up getting their legs blown off or losing their lives, and that is the story, ok, that we are trying to cover.

While Kelly tries to say this wasn't about the media, the media did turn themselves into the story, inadvertently, by poor reporting that a suspect had been arrested. Throughout the afternoon numerous, conflicting reports were coming out, mostly from Fox and CNN, stating that they had a suspect, then that an arrest had been made, finally followed by reporters converging on Boston's courthouse.

The fact is that the media's sources got it wrong, or they decided to report rumors, so that does make the media the story, despite what Megyn Kelly might want to believe.

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This is really pitiful by even Fox's standards. As Rachel Maddow noted in the clip below where she responded to this segment that aired on Megyn Kelly's America Live this Thursday, it seems Fox is hoping to fool their blind viewers, because anyone who actually watched the recent ad being run by Mayors Against Illegal Guns would be able to tell that the man in the ad was not aiming his gun at the children in the background.

Here's more via Media Matters: Fox Analyst's Attack On Gun Safety Ad Requires Lack Of Depth Perception:

Fox News is continuing their effort to rebut a TV ad calling for stronger gun laws by falsely claiming it shows a man pointing a gun at children.

Fox News digital politics editor Chris Stirewalt criticized a recent ad produced by Mayors Against Illegal Guns that features a man with a shotgun calling for expanding the background check system, claiming that the man had the gun "sort of pointing back at the kids" who are playing behind him. Laughing, Stirewalt claimed that this allegedly unsafe behavior was "too hilarious" given that the ad's title is "Responsibility," adding, "I don't think too many Arkansans will be convinced that these people know what they are talking about."

In fact, as video from the ad Fox aired during the segment makes clear, the man in the ad is not pointing his shotgun in the direction of the children.

Stirewalt also joined several other conservative media figures in falsely claiming that the man in the ad had "his finger on the trigger" in an unsafe manner. But as Media Matters has documented, this is a false claim that critics are making based on a misunderstanding of where the trigger is on the firearm.

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Breitbart News editor-at-large Ben Shapiro on Wednesday dismissed the importance of ethnic studies by insisting that only purposes of the courses were "to meet girls" and "get an easy A."

Fox News host Megyn Kelly noted on Wednesday that a U.S. Circuit Court judge recently had upheld an Arizona law that banned ethnic studies in Tucson because Republican lawmakers said that the classes promoted racial resentment.

Shapiro argued that the judge had made the right decision because ethnic studies courses -- like the Mexican American Studies Program that was banned in Tucson -- had a "myopic focus on the idea that America is a racist place against certain ethnicities and minorities."

"The second point here is just the giant waste of taxpayer dollars that this constitutes," he added. "Look, I took Jewish studies courses when I was at UCLA. There are only two reason that you take a Jewish studies course. The first is to meet girls, and the second is to get an easy A."

"And that's why most students are taking ethnic studies courses, unless they're buying into this radical ideology that really is the basis of all ethic studies courses throughout America."

"That explains a lot about the make up of some of those classes back in my school," Kelly quipped.

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They just can't stop themselves, can they? Fox will just find any excuse possible to continue their bogus New Black Panther fearmongering, the latest being the possible nomination of Thomas Perez for Labor Secretary: Fox Uses Labor Secretary News To Revive New Black Panthers Nonsense:

Fox News is using reports that Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez may be nominated as Secretary of Labor to revive their manufactured scandal that the Obama administration favored the New Black Panther Party in a 2008 voter intimidation case.

The right-wing media has spent years propping up the bogus charge that President Obama's Justice Department engaged in racially charged "corruption" in the New Black Panther Party case. The claims, promoted by GOP activist J. Christian Adams, fell apart given the fact that the Obama DOJ obtained judgment against one defendant, while the Bush DOJ declined to pursue similar allegations in 2006.

America Live anchor Megyn Kelly highlighted news of Perez's possible appointment and said that his "fingerprints are all over some rather significant controversies," including the New Black Panthers case, during the March 11 edition of America Live.

Kelly previously led Fox's charge to tar President Obama and the Justice Department with the unsubstantiated claims of former DOJ attorney and GOP activist J. Christian Adams, who claimed in a June 30, 2009 interview with Kelly that the DOJ decision not to pursue charges in the New Black Panthers case demonstrated unprecedented, racially charged corruption. Read on...

As Stephen Webster at Raw Story noted, Perez "is likely going to face some jaw-droppingly dumb questions in the Senate if he is nominated to become President Barack Obama’s next labor secretary." I can hardly wait for the hearings to begin.

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From this Monday's America Live on Fox, it seems regular Stuart Varney is just begging for another tongue lashing from Stephen Colbert. He just can't seem to stop himself from worshiping the British series Downton Abbey and the good old days where we didn't have any of that messy "ultra-democracy" where those poor "fat cats" are asked to do things like pay their taxes, or have the food they're selling inspected, or do their part to make sure we live in a civil society.

It looks like Varney has been beating this drum for about a month or so now, but apparently hasn't gotten tired of it yet. He was also continuing his attacks on "goodies" such as universal preschool, which he was attacking last week. Who wants their kids going to school when they could be waiting on some benevolent aristocrat instead?

Here's part of Varney's exchange with Megyn Kelly:

VARNEY: What other TV show have you ever seen in modern TV shows where the rich are made to look generous, honest, classy and looking after people with their money and their power? Where else do you see this?

KELLY: Yeah.

VARNEY: You are taught in America today these people, the rich, well they are evil, they are unscrupulous, they're abusers, they are as the President says "fat cats" and they should pay their fair share. The President wants to demonize the rich and make them pay for all the goodies which are showered upon our democracy. [...]

Let me throw something else at you. Where else in modern American television, do you see profit and the pursuit of profit to be good. That's what you see in Downton Abbey. They introduced profit into the running of the Earl's estate to save the estate. Profit is good. It keeps people in jobs. When do you see that today in modern television? [...]

Well, we're taught that rich people, the aristocrats, they treat people badly and to be governed by these people is a very bad system. Juxtapose that with the way we are governed today in this ultra-democracy. Are you happy to be pushed around by the bureaucracy? Are you happy to have people from the government tell you what to do, where to go, what to have inspected, how much to pay in taxes and have money taken off you? It's a ultra-democracy. It doesn't look quite so good with a critical eye.

As I said, Varney is just begging for Colbert to do round two of a segment like this one.

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Stephen Colbert told his audience Monday that like most conservatives, he's "long had respect for the Hispanic community, ever since they voted Barack Obama in for a second term" and said that was a "sobering moment" -- at least, it would be if he could stop drinking.

Colbert then opined that he thought Hispanics came to the United States to do the jobs that other Americans did not want to do, like voting for Mitt Romney, whose name he couldn't remember as usual, and he played footage of some of the political pundits out there, claiming that Hispanics should naturally be a part of their coalition. Colbert agreed.

COLBERT: Yes, Hispanic and Republicans go together like beans and very, very white rice... that is very suspicious of the beans. Now granted, we conservatives may have said a few things about immigrants in the past, but now that is just agua the Spanish word for bridge. Because Republicans have now reached out to a group they trust even less than Mexicans -- Democrats.

After showing the Republicans out there talking about their newfound embrace of immigration reform and the right wing pundits explaining how this is just going to make all of the racist statements in the past go away, Colbert made note of why they still might have some problems with those voters.

COLBERT: Yes, Republicans will take racism off the table, or have their bus boy do it. Either way it's gone.

After showing the yappers over at Fox attacking President Obama for coming out with his own plan and basically telling the President to sit down and shut up, Colbert got to the root of their problem and this recent pandering we've seen by Republicans.

COLBERT: Hispanic voters know that immigration reform is moving forward only because Republicans decided to quit blocking it. They're not going to give Obama credit for supporting it all along. That would be like passing a kidney stone and then thanking your doctor, instead of thanking the kidney stone for taking you on such a character building adventure of agony.

Colbert wound things up explaining that there is still another hitch for the GOP, which is actually following through and voting for any of this, which is the President's plan wanting to give visas for same-sex partners. As I already noted here, Harry Reid might have expressed some optimism (heaven forbid, as Colbert noted) for "treating gay people as people," but I don't share it. I don't see Republicans doing anything else but continuing to treat just about everyone other than old white men as second-class citizens if they think there's any political benefit in demonizing them.

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We've written about this over and over again here at C&L and what a bad idea it is to be calling for the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare to be raised -- how it just inflicts pain on the poor at a time of record income disparity. Not to mention the fact that there are other ways to address our debt and deficits other than attacking our social safety nets! It was nice to see Ezra Klein once again give some grief to the wealthy CEOs and pundits out there who have downplayed just how damaging these policies are for anyone who actually works for a living and is not sitting in some cushy, over-paid job. They don't care when or if they retire because they love their jobs.

Meanwhile, working people are in so much pain from the hard work they do, they take a big hit on their benefits to retire early.

For anyone that missed the segment, you can check that out here: Ezra Klein: Raising Social Security Retirement Age Concentrates Pain on the Poor.

Klein discussed the recent news that CEOs and The Business Roundtable are pushing to have the retirement ages raised to 70, but don't want the income cap raised on Social Security, because heaven forbid we do anything to harm those uber-wealthy "job creators." As Klein notes, while they didn't mind pushing for those with much lower incomes to take a big hit on their retirement benefits, the wealthiest among us aren't willing to share in that sacrifice themselves. They're drawing the line when it comes to raising their own Social Security taxes as Reuters reported:

But the group rejected shoring up Social Security by making incomes above the maximum annual threshold - which in 2012 was $110,100 - subject to payroll taxes, saying that would hurt the economy.

"You would have to raise the base upon which the taxes are applied very substantially to drive a sufficient level of revenue to address the long-term solvency of the program," Loveman said.

"That would be far more damaging to economic growth than what we're asking people to consider," he added. "If you raise the tax rate on people who earn over the current threshold, you'll have an immediate deleterious effect on employment and economic activity."

I was very happy to hear the way Klein followed up on this:

KLEIN: So if you're a CEO who makes maybe $1 million, you're only taxed for Social Security on first tenth, tenth of your income. If you're making $60,000 a year, a normal worker, every one of your $60,000 is taxed for Social Security. And this is the kind of thing, it just drives me crazy. Because you know what the flip side of these guys loving their jobs and never, ever, ever wanting to leave, not even when they're old and their back hurts and they've got lots of grand kids is and the money to take all those grand kids to an island?

They're also not going to stop being CEO of Caesar's because they're paying payroll taxes on more of their income, because they love their jobs. But that is the shell game that gets played here. Folks at the top have convinced themselves that things that won't hurt them at all like raising the retirement age are easy, no brainers, because they won't hurt anybody at all. They're just common sense.

And then they've also convinced themselves that things that will hurt them, will devastate the economy. So when they're saying no to paying higher taxes, they're not being selfish, they're just protecting jobs and growth. As Upton Sinclair liked to say, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on him not understanding it.

Groups like The Business Roundtable, they have a big voice and they like to quote themselves in the economy and argue that what they say and what they do are informed and driven by just wanting what is best for jobs and for growth and for their company. But it seems to often come down to what is best for the CEOs. It is good to be on the top.

Sadly, yes it is. And those on top seem to be more and more detached from the lives of everyday Americans as the rest of us face those realities on a day-to-day basis. Segments like this one with Klein calling them out for it on cable television unfortunately are all too rare an occurrence these days.

You can read more about this push to raise the retirement age at Klein's blog here: CEOs want to raise the retirement age to 70,

And here's more from Think Progress: Wealthy CEOs Want To Force Americans To Retire Later.

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As expected, as soon as the Obama administration released their list of executive orders to help curb gun violence, the right wing went into full blown hissy fit mode. It seems Michelle Malkin took a page straight out of Limbaugh and Drudge's book on Fox this Thursday afternoon during this interview with Megyn Kelly.

Drudge And Limbaugh Misrepresent What Obama And The Affordable Care Act Say About Doctors And Guns:

As soon as President Obama's new recommendations for gun violence prevention became public, right-wing media immediately claimed the president was issuing an executive action requiring doctors to ask patients about their guns. This is false. The president's released proposals only clarify that nothing in the Affordable Care Act changes longstanding law: doctors are still free (but not required) to discuss with their patients any health hazards, including a lack of gun safety at home or elsewhere.

Among the White House proposals for gun violence reduction, the president announced that the administration will "[c]larify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes." Nowhere in his proposal did he instead require doctors to ask about guns. The Drudge Report, however, immediately splashed across its website this graphic:

Rush Limbaugh picked up on this flatly inaccurate claim that the president required doctors to ask their patients about "gun ownership." Rather than explain the president's executive action only indicated future orders, regulations, or guidance will clarify that no law - including the ACA - prohibits them from discussing gun safety with their patients, Limbaugh reported it as a new directive that "deputizes gun-snitch doctors": [...]

Limbaugh concedes that the executive action doesn't literally say that doctors are required to ask about gun safety, but rather, in his interpretation, "the executive action today is almost essentially requiring it." The president's proposal was likely a direct response to these types of wildly erroneous interpretations of the health care reform law and executive orders that were already floating around the right-wing blogosphere, before Limbaugh added his analysis.

Go read the rest for more on how the right is lying about the language in the law. Malkin did the exact same thing during the interview above with Megyn Kelly and in a post at her blog the previous day. (Warning, link goes to Malkin's site.)

The anti-gun doctors’ lobby has a friend in Obama:

Anyone with kids knows that the invasive, anti-gun doctors’ lobby has been around a long time.

Flashback October 2007: Is your pediatrician using your kid to spy on you?

Flashback July 2008: More nosy doctors who don’t like guns

The liberal leadership of the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have long been filled with notorious gun-grabbers — and they’ve promoted years of junk science to pursue their Nanny State agenda.

Now comes President Obama, who has deputized doctors to “help” snoop on law-abiding, gun-owning patients even further. Moreover, the White House has now lent federal support to doctors’ groups trying to fight state efforts to protect gun owners’ privacy: [...]

Political malpractice plus medical malpractice in the name of saving the children is a recipe for authoritarianism. The Hippocratic Oath has been turned on its head.

Malkin seems to have a little trouble understanding the difference between "does not prohibit" and mandates. Who knew we had all of those evil liberal doctors out there who are more worried about taking away everyone's guns than doing their job and providing health care to their patients. Be afraid... be very afraid!

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At least one conservative Fox News commentator isn't blaming Mitt Romney's loss on Hurricane Sandy.

On Thursday, tea party-backed radio host Michael Graham told Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly that President Barack Obama scared voters by claiming that women would be "forced into rape camps" under the Republican presidential nominee.

Graham explained that Obama was not elected with a mandate because "he didn't run on an affirmative campaign."

"He ran on the Republicans are Satan incarnate and if women vote for them, they're going to be forced into rape camps," the radio host insisted. "And when that's your campaign, you can't be surprised when the people you ran against don't want to work with you and you don't have an issue to rally people around."

(h/t: BuzzFeed)