Congress is voting this week on expanding the G.I. Bill dramatically, reports the AP. As you can see in this MTV News report, the costs of education have risen so sharply that a lot of soldiers wind up only getting a small portion of their tuition covered. One Marine reservist got just $282 a month toward his community college education when he returned from Iraq. According to MTV:

John McCain announced his candidacy last night on the Late Show With David Letterman, and his decision is once again stirring up talk about the overlap between politics and pop culture. The idea of a presidential candidate coming on a comedy show is nothing new. Cue Nixon on Laugh-in. Cue Clinton on Arsenio. Cue John Kerry riding onto the set of the Tonight Show on a motorcycle.

But McCain's appearance isn't quite the same as Howard Dean doing damage control on Letterman and the Daily Show following his momentum-celebrating (and momentum-killing) scream. Those are cases of politicians needing to borrow some lightness from late-night TV. This was a case of late-night TV borrowing gravity from politicians. This is not a universal trend. It's limited to Letterman, mainly, and to some degree to the Daily Show, and it dates back directly to September 11, 2001.

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