"The Daily Show" took a few shots at the Obama campaign during last night's episode. Jon joked about Obama's seal blunder and his reversal on public financing.

"Barack Obama has changed the motto of the Presidential seal from E Pluribus Unum, from many to one, to Vero Possumus, which rougly means yes we can. How do you say 'but you shouldn't' in Latin?"

Big public ... that's funny. Stewart had to point out it's OK to laugh at Senator Obama. You can read that sentence again if you like. Is de-sanctification a word?

Updated: more video after the jump. HUMMER COPTER!

If you want to know what a moronic word "lifestyle" is, all you have to do is realize that in a technical sense, Atilla the Hun had an active outdoor lifestyle. – George Carlin

A legend passed on yesterday. From AFP:

Irreverent US comedian George Carlin, who became known as a voice of the 1970s counterculture and was one of the country's best known funny men, died on Sunday aged 71, US media reported.

The Grammy award winner, whose career spanned five decades, died of heart failure, his publicist Jeff Abraham told the New York Times.

Carlin had a history of heart problems and passed away in Santa Monica, California after checking into the hospital with chest pains.

As a former stand-up comic, his passing has special meaning for me, and so I feel honored to be able to pay him tribute. Although he is gone from the realm of the flesh, his spirit lives on, no more evident than in my thoughts as I read that article:

He's good enough, he's smart enough and goddone it, people like him!

Well, at least the Minnesota state Democratic convention does. In fact, they chose him on the first ballot by 72%. His challenger, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, pulled out once Franken hit the required 60% threshold. The former Saturday Night Live! writer/player and Air America host is now officially the Democratic candidate to go against Republican Senator Norm Coleman in the fall.

If you remember Franken's time on SNL, you can only imagine how his Republican opponents have reacted to his campaign. Franken recently had to apologize for a 2000 article in Playboy depicting a fictional sex institute and his, um, participation in it. My colleagued, Liza Porteus Viana, has a full round-up of Franken's recent problems with his past here.

But, hell, if this campaign season needs anything, it's a little bit of humor, right? We've had an actor President, a Governator, a Senator that played all sorts of authoritative figures on screen, Sonny Bono, Gopher from the Love Boat and Minnesota has already suffered through a professional wrestler. Can they turn out a comedian, too?

With bestselling books that include Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations and Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, I have a feeling that Minnesotans will return Coleman to Washington by a slim margin.

Self Mockery from Obama.

Democrat Barack Obama paid an unscheduled late-night visit to Mount Rushmore Friday, visiting the national memorial at closing time and joking that his ears were too big to ever be included in such a display.

Two days after rival Hillary Rodham Clinton made a campaign stop here, Obama joined a group of reporters and staff members for an after-dark sightseeing visit to the national memorial, where the faces of four presidents are carved into the mountain. South Dakota and Montana hold their primary elections on Tuesday, the final ones in the nation, and Obama was campaigning in both states.

Asked by a reporter if he ever envisioned himself carved into the mountain, he said, "I don't think my ears would fit. There's only so much rock up there."

The problem of course, (me taking this way too seriously I know) is that Abraham Lincoln didn't exactly have the tiniest ears in the world, but he got on Rushmore anyway. How? Duh, on Rushmore, they leave the ears off! Which I suppose he could have learned by, I don't know, looking at the monument?

Yeah, yeah, I know, it was a jest, all in good fun and all that. I'll end up by agreeing with Obama, that Mt. Rushmore is "pretty spiffy."

"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California." -- Hillary Clinton, May 24, 2008

Barack Obama's weird followers were predictably "outraged" when Senator Hillary sort of suggested that sometimes Democratic presidential candidates get assassinated in June, before the convention. But she was just pointing out the likelihood of terrible things always happening in, uh, June.

After all, June has traditionally been the deadliest month for politicians and pretty much everybody else, as this Top Ten List of June Horrors will illustrate. SHE'S JUST TRYING TO WARN US.

Welcome to the regular edition of Videos of the Week, Memorial Day Edition. I posted a special VOTW yesterday, rounding up videos related to Hillary Clinton's remarks about Bobby Kennedy's assassination. I won't duplicate any of those here, so check that post out if you missed it.

This week on VOTW, John McCain vs. John McCain, then vs. Ellen, a really strict diet,

This first clip is unbelievable, as Sharon Stone shows as flawed an understanding of Karma as I've ever seen, but simultaneously refers to the persecution of Tibetans as "not being nice."

In this hotly contested primary season, one which features Hillary Clinton locked in mortal combat with arithmetic and John McCain battling out from under a frantic GOP dogpile, the speculation has turned to the so-called "Veepstakes," with Democratic speculation focused around a "Dream Ticket" of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. But where does that leave McCain?

His choice of a VP is going to be a tough one, because he needs to balance out his ticket with someone even more conservative than he is to satisfy his base, but his age will make the Veep a lightning rod for scrutiny in the general election.

Satire website The Onion has a novel solution:

WASHINGTON-Presidential hopefuls John McCain (R-AZ), Barack Obama (D-IL), and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) announced Monday their plans to form what many Beltway observers have already dubbed the "2008 Nightmare Ticket," a calculated move that political analysts say offers voters the worst of both worlds.

...The candidates said they had not yet decided who would fill the offices of president, vice president, and a new post the nominees are calling "the middle president."

Given the crop McCain has to choose from, this might be the best he can do.

The Republican candidate made two appearances on Saturday Night Live, first during Weekend Update, where he encouraged the Democrats to continue campaigning:

McCain also showed up in a mock campaign spot poking fun at his age:

Editor's note: Tommy Christopher was found early this morning, lying naked and shivering, in a cooling molten crater on the Southbound side of the Garden State Parkway. Paramedics took him to an undisclosed hospital, where he is reportedly in an "unresponsive state."

Tom Fitsimmons, a spokesman for Mr. Christopher, has confirmed that the incident is related to his recent experiments with inter-dimensional travel.

Reporter: So, can we assume that you can't transport clothing or other objects to parallel universes?

Fitzsimmons: No, you can. You're thinking of the "Terminator" movies, that's time travel. We don't know what happened to his clothing.

An early witness on the scene noted that the catatonic, fetally positioned space-time traveller was clutching a document of some sort, along with a $1 bill with a picture of Jesus on it. The witness retrieved the documentbefore the authorities arrived, but spent the dollar bill on a Lotto ticket.

What follows is the content of that document, a news article entitled:

President Kerry to Run For 2nd Term

May 14 - 2008 With yesterday's win in the West Virginia Democratic Primary, President John Kerry has all but sewn up his party's nomination to seek a second term.

I'm guessing here that Saturday Night Live is not planning on ever having Senator Clinton on as guest ever again or else this is snark so deep that it's over even my head. However, I embed, you decide.