Conan O’Brien must have been fairly happy last night that he had the freedom TBS gives, because Bill Maher certainly made the most of it. Joking that coming to the show “felt like a real job” because he had to wake up before 2 PM to make it, Maher somehow ran the gamut from gay marriage to President Obama in short-shorts to bullying and child molestation. It was a fairly packed interview.

Well… this was unexpected. Gov. Chris Christie, as a poll released this week clearly showed, may be one of the most popular politicians in New Jersey history—challenged in that positive spotlight only be Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s exploits saving people from fires by hand and driving around town shoveling snow. In a comedy sketch released by Christie this week, he pokes fun at his frustration with Booker’s apparent superhero antics until he finds the one thing Booker can’t handle: a call from Mitt Romney.

Rush Limbaugh spent a portion of his program today celebrating a victory in the so-called “War on Women,” as a CBS/New York Times poll released today show what he says Democrats are trying hardest to hide: Mitt Romney is actually quite popular among women. “Things are falling apart for Obama,” he noted today, explaining that after all the attempts to say women are “miserable” and “oppressed,” the polls they “live and die for” are turning their backs on the party. How does he know this one poll is the one speaking truths? “The ‘Rush Babes For America’ Facebook group has almost 200,000 friends!”

Breaking News: someone mentioned Keith Olbermann on television! This was a major development in the Olbersphere today, and Olbermann, via his Twitter account, snapped at the opportunity like a fry near the surface of the ocean tempted by the most alluring chum the anglers above could offer. Today the inadvertent target was Fox & Friends‘ Gretchen Carlson, who noted that she had been on the “Power Players” edition of Jeopardy! with Olbermann. For her high insolence, Olbermann tweeted, “that’s why they let her into Final Jeopardy as a Mercy Play.”

Grover Norquist is slowly working his way into show business. The anti-tax icon and occasional guest in The Onion sketches is finally making it to the silver screen– as a homeless former businessman extra in the second film installment of Atlas Shrugged. And we must say he looks… fairly convincing!

MSNBC’s Chuck Todd is likely very accustomed to criticism for his politics from all sides– after all, that’s what the job entails. What he perhaps wasn’t expecting this morning is that Fernando Fiore, host of the most popular sports show on Univisión, took umbrage at his report on the President’s schedule, in which he jokingly promised never to talk about soccer again.

President Obama made his second appearance on The View today, a fairly unorthodox forum in which a sitting president can be challenged, and unorthodox challenges he met: questions about how he really felt about Vice President Joe Biden, how he could improve the economy more than Mitt Romney, and which Kardashian is the one with the recent divorce. Indicative of the atmosphere? An exchange in the second segment where Barbara Walters noted, “this is the first time we have all sat down and spoken without crosstalk,” to which the President remarked it made him a bit ill at ease: “you’re all so well-behaved!”

The vote to constitutionalize the ban on same-sex marriage in North Carolina, state where the Democratic National Convention is slated to occur, has outraged many who see marriage equality as a core civil rights issue the Democrats should be pursuing. On CNN’s Starting Point this morning, the previously anonymous founder of a 65,000-member wide Facebook petition to get the Democrats out of North Carolina, Murray Lipp, explained the objectives of his group, and why he considered so important the issue to the Democratic Party.

Alex Trebek began his semi-annual “Power Players” edition of Jeopardy! last night, hosting Chris Matthews, Lizzy O’Leary, and the eventual winner, former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. While the episode was as eminently watchable as every Jeopardy! installment, the most entertaining segment of the show was watching Trebek interact with the contestants– and, especially, watching Matthews explain to Trebek his method for covering political news.

Bristol Palin has somehow managed to get on the upswing of the “Obama Gay Marriage Revelation” news cycle this week by attacking President Obama for consulting his daughters over the decision, and insisting that she knows what the ideal household for a child is like. She received, she writes today, some outrageously inappropriate invective in return– including death threats– that she notes undermine the point of those attacking her in the name of tolerance.

The numbers are out for Gov. Chris Christie, and a Fairleigh Dickinson poll out today spells great news for America’s loudest governor: a 56% approval rating. A paltry number in other states, perhaps, but in New Jersey, those numbers seem impossibly high for any public servant at the state level. The Washington Post‘s Aaron Blake attempts to rationalize the numbers as the residents’ fault: “New Jersey voters are notoriously tough on their politicians.” As a lifelong resident of the Garden State, I object: it isn’t that New Jersey voters are notoriously tough on their politicians– it’s that New Jersey politicians are notoriously bad.

President Obama is in New York today to address the graduating class of 2012 at Barnard College, in Columbia University. After a warm introduction from the staff of the college– the sister college to President Obama’s alma mater, Columbia University– including nods to his recent declaration of support for same-sex marriage and LGBT rights, the President got up on the podium with a message to send off the newly minted graduates into the world.

With President Obama’s announcement of support for same-sex marriage still at the top of the news cycle, today’s Now with Alex Wagner panel debated the significance of the announcement and whether the hype, particularly a certain Newsweek cover, was somewhat overblown. Georgetown Prof. Michael Eric Dyson thought the hype was on par with the significance, taking the Newsweek ball and running with it, asserting that President Obama’s declaration of support for gay marriage “forced us all to come out of closets.”

President Obama’s headline-grabbing flip-flop on gay marriage may cost him dearly in the more religious parts of the black community, reports CNN today, as pastors tell their congregations the president is wrong in stepping in. In a report on the divide over social issues in the black community, Athena Jones speakers to Rev. Dr. Emmett Burns, who insists that, while he and his peregrines won’t support Mitt Romney, they have no interest in going to the polls.

The struggle to catch Osama Bin Laden has been a long time coming for many CIA counter-terror agents, and on 60 Minutes last night, one former official explained to Lara Logan the frustrating process of targeting and finding Bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1999, barely taking precautions to cover himself, and receiving only bureaucratic obstacles from the Clinton White House when asking for authorization to kill him.

“The only thing I was upset about was that I wasn’t the one frolicking on the beach with him in a bikini! What a sexy man!” It was the sort of political commentary even the sauciest of female American pundits would never dare speak of the most coveted Hollywood star, but Jaime Bayly, Peru’s most controversial political talk show host, made no bones about his lust for Father Alberto Cutié, known in America by the nickname “Father Oprah”—a talk show host himself, who would leave the Catholic faith for the Episcopalian Church shortly thereafter to continue his monogamous, consensual, and wildly scandalous relationship with an adult woman.

Jon Stewart clearly had little interest in talking about the 2012 presidential race today. And who could blame him, when people are trying to mine asteroids and Neil DeGrasse Tyson is sitting backstage solving a Rubik’s cube? Stewart did, however, finally turn to yesterday’s primary and all it represented– from Newt Gingrich dropping out to President Obama “slow-jamming” the news with Jimmy Fallon.

The crew over at Fox News have not, for most of the day, taken particularly well to President Obama’s appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last night– nor have many conservatives. On The Last Word tonight, Lawrence O’Donnell expressed no surprise at this line of attack, but some dismay at how it was not blindingly obvious to many arguing against the appearance that so much precedent corroborated its legitimacy– from Ronald Reagan on Dean Martin’s Celebrity Roasts to Richard Nixon hitting up Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.

Sean Hannity often has plenty of conservative guests on the program, but tonight he shared the stage with two of the more animated liberal public intellectuals in the country– Professor Cornel West and Tavis Smiley, who wrote a book so antithetical to Hannity’s ideals, he began the discussion tonight by calling out its title.

Tonight’s episode of Piers Morgan Tonight was a special one– an hour with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who answered an hour’s worth of candid questions about everything from politics to his finest moments and, of course, sex. The Dalai Lama explained to Morgan why he had chosen a celibate lifestyle and the peace he acquired from it, and what exactly goes through his mind when an attractive woman walks by.

“It’s been a very bad week for [President Obama],” Ann Coulter told Sean Hannity as their segment tonight opened. The two agreed, it was quickly made clear, that the President’s appearance on last night’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon made him look “silly,” and actually hurt his image.

After years of jokes that President Obama needs a teleprompter to deliver speeches (a fact that makes him, instead of more humanizing to some in television media, seemingly more robotic), liberals got a bit of a freebie from Senator (and potential vice presidential nominee) Marco Rubio today, as he interrupted his own speech to note that he forgot his last page. Proving that it’s only stupid and annoying if the other side does it, Ed Schultz immediately picked up on this tonight, joking that Sen. Rubio doesn’t “know his material” because of the gaffe.

Even the tamest election nights tend to be a bit busy, and last night NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell sighed exasperatedly at the stress of her job– she had to follow both Mitt Romney‘s and Newt Gingrich‘s speeches simultaneously. Whether she was grumbling over the fact that she had to watch these two Republicans or merely over the strain of the job was a matter of contention on The O’Reilly Factor tonight, where Bill O’Reilly criticized the anchor for being blatantly liberal on many occasions.

If you are anything like me, the news that Greta Van Susteren would be accompanied this year at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner by Lindsay Lohan was a bittersweet announcement. Last year, Van Susteren attended alongside Kim and Kris Kardashian, the reigning queens of guilty pleasure TV. Sure, Lohan was a fun guest, but would this mean the Kardashians would find themselves excluded from this year’s Nerd Prom fun? Rest easy, Kardashifans (is this a real term?), for Fox News has us all covered, extending an invite to Kim and her mom, along with a number of television’s biggest stars.

With Newt Gingrich political life support system finally faltering this morning, the roller coaster of ideological frivolity that is the general election can begin in earnest in all its mommy-hating, dog-eating, slow-jamming glory. But before biting into all the delicious and philosophically unhealthy political junk food the campaigns throw our way, a reality check on the policies both candidates present the American people would serve us voters well. Unfortunately for both campaigns, even a cursory look at the Barack Obama presidency illustrates the tale of an assertive, steely-willed neo-conservative: the exact opposite of what both President Obama and Mitt Romney are banking on the American people believing.