The Daily Show did one of their patented "public figures contradicting themselves on tape" routines last night, and this time they had a wealth of material. It was all related to Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican nominee for Vice President. She is by all sane accounts inexperienced. Also she has a bit of family drama with her unwed teen daughter being all pregnant and stuff! This, obviously, is "off-limits" because everyone has declared it "off-limits" to talk about children that way. Unless those children are, like, related to famous people and on TV sometimes! Then their parents are nimrods. Just click through for Bill O'Reilly to explain it all.

Rachel Sklar of the Huffington Post has delivered some extraordinary news about comedian and Daily Show correspondent Wyatt Cenac, albeit at the end of a long post about an event from improv troupe Upright Citizens Brigade. It seems Cenac, who has an "I'll friend anyone" policy on MySpace and Facebook, learned through the social networking applications that he has "a family I never knew about." He explained at the improv event that, quite sensibly, he decided he didn't really believe the news after receiving a tip about his long-lost sister through one of his profiles. But now he's quite thoroughly convinced:

CNN's American Morning has a thing for cheesy rock-and-roll intros, and the Daily Show tonight showcased the most embarrassing among them, including Scorpion's "Rock You Like A Hurricane" for a story on Tropical Storm Bertha or "Changes" by David Bowie for everything from credit cards to reform in China. But the best part comes at the end, when host Jon Stewart reveals how American Morning host John Roberts, once considered heir apparent to Dan Rather at the CBS Evening News, learned to pair pop hits with headlines. Hint: Think Adam Curry. Click the icon for video. UPDATE:

Kristen Schaal-are we all in agreement that she is the best?-did a great segment on The Daily Show last night that managed to perfectly parody a Tonight Show dangerous animal act and satirize the irritating and sexist "cougar" thing that's become the worst kind of bullshit trend. So watch it after the jump!

CBS News Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan showed up on The Daily Show last night to bum us all out. Seriously, she "cracked" some "jokes" but they were too dark to laugh at, and she always sounds so deadly serious in her little English South African purr. So then she gave up on jokes and said the wars were miserable and CBS News executives should be the first against the wall. Basically we're all terrible people, you see, and then she shamed Jon into basically saying The American People Themselves have abandoned their responsibilities. We can't imagine what Logan has against the American TV news! Her own network ran a totally compelling story just today on the state of the war between boys and girls. One of the most awkward Daily Show interviews ever, attached.

Jon Stewart's jovial yelling and trademark expressions (the Dr. Evil finger-to-mouth is particularly dated) are becoming increasingly tiresome. But Comedy Central's Daily Show does occasionally still perform a useful civic function. Last night, for instance, Stewart skewered Fox News and other cable networks for their delightedly reluctant airing of internet rumors about Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee. The Daily Show's writers came up with an amusingly silly definition of Baracknophobia: "The sickness manifests itself as rumor, most often in the form of the only email your grandmother has ever successfully been able to forward." But look out for an admirable dissection of Michelle Malkin's moronic claim that Obama plagiarized an old speech by Mario Cuomo. After the jump, last night's broadcast. Watch from about minute 5:00.

Like an old, scorned lover, Scott McClellan can't quite fully betray and repudiate the man who made him do awful things, George W. Bush. The former Bush press secretary has written a fairly extensive and blunt tell-all book about his time with the president, but he's still splitting hairs about what happened. So when McClellan found himself on the Daily Show, discussing the administration's hushing of the economic cost of the war in Iraq, he couldn't help but insist the cover-up was not "willful deception" but was the common practice of selective disclosure. Host Jon Stewart wasn't having any of it: "Somebody made a willful decision, 'don't talk about the price [of the war]...'" McClellan: "I don't think it was like that."

John McCain's primary qualifications for the presidency are that he's old, he was tortured, and he's been a corrupt Senator for hundreds of years. Also he'd like you to know that he has a sense of humor, which is why he's The Daily Show's most-invited guest ever. On the show last night, McCain once again demonstrated how "hip" and "with it" he is by naming a character on a popular sitcom. One that is currently on-air, even! Not, like, Maynard G. Krebs or something. Jon Stewart desperately tried to get him to appear more presidential by making a joke he knew McCain wouldn't play along with.

Yesterday, Arianna Huffington revealed that John McCain told her in 2000 that he didn't vote for George W. Bush. Which we believe. We believe that he told her this, anyway. Who knows if it was true then, or now. But McCain denied it, right away. Which leads Arianna to list all the documented times he's blatantly lied about saying something so far this campaign season. A fun little list! Of course it shows why McCain felt comfortable telling Arianna Huffington that he didn't vote for Bush in 2000. And also why he's the most popular guest in Daily Show history!

Pictured is a screen capture of the avatars assembled in Second Life for yesterday's last week's congressional hearing about virtual worlds. Why is congress giving Linden Lab the time of day? Terrorists, silly! According to Jane Harman, D-California, "Islamic militants are suspected of using Second Life, the Internet virtual world, to hunt for recruits and mimic real life terrorism." That's quite the bait to dangle in front of congress for free publicity, Linden Lab PR team! Full clip from the Daily Show after the jump.

Apparently no one can just deliver the damn news any more, straight, everyone has to try and be funny. First it was the Daily Show, then Colbert Report, then Fox's attempted conservative news satire and most recently CNN's planned comedy news show. Now the Economist, the starchy British magazine, has launched a site in collaboration with Chicago's Second City improv troupe.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, still having their cute little class president election, are advertising in the gay press—the first time any presidential candidates have done so, according to Editor & Publisher. Obama did it first, with "full-page and full-color, in some circumstances, ads in some of the LGBT publications in Ohio and Texas." Clinton hasn't gone that far, but the campaign is planning some buys in Pennsylvania. Obama's campaign site is currently hosting a video featuring, in the words of a tipster, a "super cute, super gay teacher." The Dems have not always been proud of their special relationship with the gay community, but this year, every vote counts. APROPOS OF ABSOLUTELY NOTHING The Daily Show talked to college student and Democratic superdelegate Jason Rae earlier this week. His favorite movie is Love, Actually, and his favorite musician is Celine Dion. Correspondent Jason Jones challenged him to an arm-wrestling competition. Video after the jump!

You know the Colbert Report, and how it's really successful? And how other forms of news are less popular and some are dying? CNN noticed that too! So their Headline News channel will soon be airing Not Just Another Cable News Show, a weekly program with a light take on hard news using memorable gaffes from the past week. Time.com Washington editor Ana Marie Cox, of Wonkette fame, and noted Canadian/Huffington Post contributor Rachel Sklar will be commenters. The show, whose concept is stolen from the first segment of the Daily Show and whose title is stolen from the Wayans brothers, begins April 5. [AP]

Tina Fey, arguably the most powerful vagina-having joke force in the universe, has rarely minced words in the past when it comes to some of her lesser-abled collaborators, whether describing Paula Abdul as a "disaster" or Paris Hilton as "a disease-ridden fucktard" [Ed.note: Could we have an intern verify that?] But we never expected the 30 Rock star and showrunner to run off so freely at the mouth about her comedy giant equals, such as in the case of her surprisingly harsh assessment of Jon Stewart's more politically solicitous material:

The late-breaking news about now former Gov. Eliot Spitzer's sex scandal caught the Daily Show and some of its late-night compatriots short of jokes, and Daily Show host Jon Stewart admitted as much on Monday night's show, when he had to cut from a few brief Spitzer jokes to a package on Wyoming's Democratic primary. One night later, the political comedy show was ready to feast on the news, as shown in the thumbnail at left. The result lacked the impressive same-day turnaround of David Letterman's Monday night performance, but had its moments, as show in the excerpt after the jump.

Poor Hillary Clinton was on The Daily Show last night, live via satellite from Austin, Texas. The interview was long, and awkward, and generally bad television. As for the wisdom of appearing on a basic cable comedy program the night before one of the most important elections of her political career, Senator Clinton was self-deprecating: "it is pretty pathetic."

NBC News anchor Brian Williams, onetime standup comedian and America's secret boyfriend, held his own on the Daily Show, becoming one of the few guests on the program to give as good as they get. Fall in love with him all over again as he fields from host Jon Stewart questions like, "which candidate are you biased against?" Video after the jump.

Writer and "cultural critic" Lee Siegel went on the Daily Show to promote his "I hates teh Internets" book, Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. Lee is also known for the little anonymous-commenting stunt he pulled on his own essays for the New Republic. He thinks we are just spending way too much time on these infernal machines, and we don't really even know who we're "chatting with!"

While Stewart lamented his program's inability to get the kind of side-deal the WGA made with Worldwide Pants (the Guild, it seems, isn't really embracing the idea of giving corporate monolith Viacom a break), he still dedicated most of the show to the strike; in the above segment—one probably not as improvised as the WGA would like, but given the pro-cause subject matter, the union probably won't be sending anyone over to Stewart's office to have a testy sit-down about strike rules—the host details the dispute over internet compensation, explaining how the $1.99 fees charged for iTunes downloads of his show are purely a shipping and handling charge, the proposed "Shut The Fuck Up" formula for new-media residuals, and how the viewing of written content on iPods clearly falls under the "Hickory Farms promotional cheese" principle.