Ok, I admit it. One of the reasons that I watch The daily Show is becuase sometimes you have to have a sense of humor regarding the news or you'll slide into a pit of depression.

Sure, it's funny to watch politicians get caught talking out of both sides of their mouths. The puns, the jokes, etc. It's fun.

But what I just saw (recorded last night) is something I find quite disturbing.

November 5th there was a gathering in DC called, by it's supporters, a "Superbowl of Freedom" against the proposed health care bill. Now, on Fox News they talked about how 20-40,000 people were there, or as the Washington Post put it, about 10,000. This got a lot of coverage from Fox as a big story (as opposed to them not covering some 80,000 in DC for gay rights).

As they were showing footage of the crowd, you saw them go from some tight shots of a moderate gathering to then cut to a huge throng on the mall - with a caption of "Earlier". Hannity was talking to one of the oragnizers who was exclaiming how it was "complete word of mouth", a wonderful turnout.

Somehow, the weather had changed during all this. What started, in the tight shots, as a clear fall day with the leaves turning, had morphed into a somewhat overcast day and all the trees were suddenly green in the shots of the huge crowds on the mall.

Turns out that Hannity was talking about the November 5th gather and showing footage shot and shown on Glen Beck's show covering the "9/12" rally almost 2 months ago.

So Hannity uses Beck's almost 2-month-old footage and actually says it's what they just shot. Deliberately lying, just like Michael Moore did in "Bowling for Columbine" when he misused footage, ran voice-overs from different events than what was being shown and spliced things out of order to do a hatchet job on Charlton Heston and the NRA.

It's one thing to have a dissenting opinion. And, quite frankly there's plenty there for good, honest debate. But out and out lying to make yourself look better. There's no defense for that.

Oh, and before I hear the "well they do it to", I would remind people of the old salt "two wrongs don't make a right". In high school semantics we learned "7 Fallacies of Debating". One of them was the "You're another" tactic.

"We Report, You Decide"? This isn't just "spin". This is out and out lies. As my grandfater used to say, "a bald-faced preverication".