I couldn't tell from all the back and forth whether it finally ended up that Ron Paul was excluded or not. Was he?

One thing is for sure, Fox news is a joke. It's a thoroughly biased entertainment medium posing as a news outlet. It's designed for feeding a select audience what it already wants to hear and for making a ton of money selling advertising. Cable channels are not bound by the same Federal laws regarding acting in the public interest and equal time. Broadcast networks use the broadcast spectrum ("airwaves"), which are publicly owned, so there are rules regarding their use. In order to maintain their license, they follow certain rules. Cable does not have those sae erules, so cable "news" shows like Fox can get away with being more biased.