On his Fox News show tonight, Sean Hannity complained that an ad by Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson “cherry-pick[ed]” the words of his Republican opponent, Dan Webster, calling it “deceptive” and “dishonest.” Hannity's outrage would have been more convincing if he hadn't been engaged in his own bit of cherry-picking earlier in the show.

Hannity played a clip of Democratic Sen. Patty Murray saying in 2002 that Osama bin Laden was “out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. He's made their lives better. We have not done that.” This segued to guest Ann Coulter -- who conveniently has a new column repeating the very same quote -- denigrating Murray as “the stupidest person on the planet” and “abject moron” and claiming that “a skeleton has a higher IQ.”

But Hannity and Coulter took Murray out of context. As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported at the time:

[Murray spokesman Todd] Webster said Murray's comments, to an honors class at Columbia River High School in Vancouver, were intended to get the students to think about America's role in the world and why bin Laden is popular in many poor countries.

“This was not a dossier of the great works of Osama bin Laden. This is about how do we secure a better and stronger future for this country?,” Webster said. “Do we close our doors and hunker down, or do we engage the rest of the world?”

In her statement, Murray called bin Laden “an evil terrorist” who is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans.

“While we continue to search every corner of the globe to destroy Osama bin Laden and his al-Quaida network, should we also consider the longer-term issue of what else can be done to improve relations with all nations including the Arab world?” Murray asked. “How else can we bring America's values to those who do not understand us?”

[...]

Michael Swetnam, co-author of a book on bin Laden and al-Qaida, said Murray's comments were mostly on the mark. He said bin Laden since 1988 has been on a mission to build schools, roads and homes for widows of those killed in the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

So, in fact, Murray was trying to explain why bin Laden was popular with some and why the United States is not, and she wasn't praising bin Laden. But don't look for Hannity to give you that context -- he's too busy hypocritically complaining about cherry-picking by others to be concerned about his own.