I'm sure many of you are familiar with the chokehold death of Eric Garner by now:

The streets, social media, and the general public have been outraged over the past few days by the police-induced death of Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York City, this past Friday. Police stopped Garner, a 43-year-old African-American man, for allegedly selling loose cigarettes. Garner insisted that he was breaking up a fight, a claim that seems to be corroborated by a widely circulated video that captured the incident.

The clip, which is simultaneously disheartening and grisly, shows Garner complaining about being harassed for no reason. Officers swiftly attempt to arrest him while one cop applies what appears to be an unauthorized chokehold and slams Garner’s face into the ground. Garner, who was reported to be 6’3 and 350 lbs., suffered from asthma and can be heard on the clip pleading, “I can’t breathe!” Seconds later Garner goes silent and police usher bystanders away from the scene. Garner died shortly thereafter, reportedly from a heart attack that was caused by the incident, but the official cause of death is to be determined.

Sean Hannity hosted one of his all-star panels, which included two idiots who defended the over the top police actions against a man who wasn't committing a robbery or any kind of a violent crime, but was selling cigarettes. Yes, cigarettes.

And how did Hannity frame the entire horrible incident? By complaining that NY's high taxing of cigarettes has just created a huge black market to sell cigarettes.

Hannity: Six dollar a pack tax on cigarettes in New York state and NYC, so now they've created a black market to sell cigarettes.

There has always been a black market on cigarettes, always. Just watch an episode of Law and Order called the "Torrents Of Greed," from 1991.

Isaac Skolnick, a store owner, is severely beaten. His daughter tells police that he was being threatened by a man named Pilefsky whom she suspected of being related to organized crime. Eye-witness Edgar Hoover, a homeless junkie identifies Pilefsky from a photo line-up, and Pilefsky is arrested. Logan (Chris Noth) discovers that Mario Zalta, a man with connections to the Masucci Family, was a co-defendant of Pilefsky at an earlier trial.

On investigating Zalta, Greevey (George Dzundza) and Logan discover that the Masucci family is offering bootlegged cigarettes to store owners at lower-than-market prices and threatening store owners who don't comply. However, their evidence is obtained without a warrant and is inadmissible in court. They arrest a store owner selling the untaxed cigarettes, pressuring him into naming Zalta as another participant in the cigarette scam, and Zalta is arrested.

The lies just roll of his tongue, don't they?

Then the cops have to do their jobs and waste time from drug dealers and rapists and murderers and arrest cigarette dealers and this guy kinda resisted arrest. The guy out him in a chokehold and now maybe one of these cops is going to jail.

In Hannity's lying world, if NYC didn't tax cigarettes then the police could focus on rapists and whatnot and wouldn't have killed Eric Garner. It's that simple.

I put up some of the idiotic banter that followed by Bo Dietl and another fool who tried to defend the police from any wrongdoing except admitting that chokeholds are illegal in NY.