Rep. Ron Paul may stick to advancing his own positions during debates and letting others do the sniping, but he took a detour on last night’s Tonight Show in a rapid-fire round where Jay Leno asked him to comment on each candidate in term. While he had some nice things to say about Jon Huntsman, his reactions to Newt Gingrich and Rep. Michele Bachmann were particularly harsh, the latter of which he noted “she doesn’t like Muslims… she wants to go get ‘em.”

While the Donald Trump debate is perilously close to cancellation, one pundit is willing to admit that, had he been a candidate, he would’ve gladly participated. Bill O’Reilly told Jay Leno last night that, given the sort of audience a Trump debate could attract, he didn’t understand why candidates wouldn’t want to go, as well as giving Republican primary predictions and explaining how he ended up umbrella-attacking a heckler.

Herman Cain‘s rise to the top tier of presidential candidates has finally landed him in a place where his presence– given that his resume includes two fast food chains and a gospel album–seemed natural: late night TV. Cain joined host Jay Leno last night to chat about Sarah Palin‘s potential candidacy, the relevance of Donald Trump, and which of his fellow candidates has “good hair” or is a “grumpy old man.”

Rep. Michele Bachmann made her late-night debut as a Presidential candidate last night, and given her hardline conservative stances on social issues, it was no surprise that she and Tonight Show host Jay Leno butted heads on a few issues– albeit in much milder conversation than many are accustomed to see with her. Of particular note was Rep. Bachmann’s exchange with the host over same-sex marriage, who seemed to find sincerely problematic the position that such marriage endangers the American family.

The Wall Street Journal has delved deeply into the ratings for TBS’s highly hyped Conan, the return of the red-headed former Tonight Show host to late night, and WSJ concludes it’s a flop. “In the nine months since Conan‘s debut, TBS has canceled its only other late-night show, George Lopez‘s Lopez Tonight, and viewership of Conan has tumbled, by about 60% since its high-profile debut last fall,” writes the paper’s Lauren A.E. Schuker. TBS’s pricey Conan O’Brien experiment is flopping—and is about to get even more expensive.”

Tonight Show host Jay Leno decided to try his hand at delivering a joke about the recently-wrapped Casey Anthony trial. It’s a challenging undertaking given that his writers have to 1) come up with a joke that hasn’t already been made roughly 78,943 times on Twitter and that 2) isn’t in poor taste, given we’re dealing with the tragic death of a young child. So how did Leno fare?

NBC’s Late Night host Jimmy Fallon speaks honestly about his own company’s missteps in handling the transition from Jay Leno to Conan O’Brien–and then back–calling the original decision to tell Leno he’d eventually be replaced by O’Brien “an insult.”

In an interview set to air on NBC’s Tonight Show Tuesday, Lindsay Lohan made her first public comments since a judge found her in violation of her probation and sentenced her to 120 days in jail. Lohan remains free on bail pending an appeal, and she told Leno she knows she’s “made a lot of mistakes,” but she’s “not a kid anymore.”

In a clip from the recorded interview that aired on NBC’s TODAY, Lohan says her career began to unravel thanks to “being young, and being in a position that I was in, you don’t really take the time to appreciate what you have.” She says she let others make decisions for her in a “whirlwind” and she says she’s “in the clear now.”

NBC’s late night comic Jay Leno took on CNN’s Paul Steinhauser on the Tonight Show the other night. What? Who is CNN’s Paul Steinhauser, you ask? Geez. What kind of political geek are you? Steinhauser’s CNN’s deputy political director based in the DC bureau, and he appears on camera during the day, and often in the background when anchors like Wolf Blitzer are doing liveshots from the DC bureau. Leno aired a funny clip stringing together a series of these clips, and in each one, as soon as the liveshot begins, Steinhauser picks up his phone–to Leno, clearly faking importance with a mock three second phone call.

NBC’s Jay Leno put the NBC graphics department to work in an effort to determine if Fox News correspondent Mike Emanuel would look better with his hair repositioned into an Abe Lincoln style beard. Spinning Emanuel’s hair from the top of his head to his chin reveals a sharp, distinctive and suitably White House look that could just propel Emanuel into the very top echelon of national correspondents.

A cable news feud pitting two unlikely characters against each other, Fox’s Glenn Beck and CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, shows no sign of slowing. On NBC’s Tonight Show Thursday, Zakaria (alongside at least two Kardashians) mocked Beck, his chalkboard and his math skills. “I corrected his math,” he said. When Jay Leno asked about Beck’s comments that Zakaria is an “America basher and useful idiot,” Zakaria smilingly shot back.

In an interview with FORTUNE, Conan O’Brien reveals that after his departure from NBC and The Tonight Show, the network was unhappy with the comedian’s sudden popularity on Twitter.

O’Brien tells FORTUNE‘s Douglas Warsaw that he recalls being told, “The network isn’t crazy about you tweeting. They’re not sure that’s cool.” O’Brien called their bluff: “Tell them I would be thrilled if they shut down my Twitter account. I’d love it if that got out. You think PR’s been bad up till now? Wait till you take away my Twitter account.”

Conan O’Brien has given a revealing interview to The New York Times‘ Bill Carter, talking about the move from NBC’s Tonight Show to his current perch as host of Conan on TBS.

“Everything has worked out great for me,” O’Brien says, insisting he’s come a long way from this time last year, when he made the decision not to move Tonight to midnight, and was forced from NBC. O’Brien says the emotions of 2010 have settled. “We all know what happened. Life’s short. I’ve got a family and I’m really happy here, so I don’t think about it too much.”

The folks in the audience for Jay Leno‘s safe-for-all-audiences Tonight Show clearly would’ve rather had a visit from some cuddly zoo animals than what they got: an extended and at times awkwardly tense visit from HBO’s Bill Maher. Talking about the shootings in Arizona and Fox News chief Roger Ailes‘ reported instructions to his staff to tone down language after Tucson, Maher argued it would never happen, as “that’s the rhetoric they love. The right wing loves- the go-to rhetoric for them is ‘wouldn’t it be fun to kill the people we disagree with.’”

Tonight Larry King interviews Conan O’Brien to learn what he really thinks about the other late night show hosts. Unfortunately, no juicy details are included in this preview clip, but we do learn he’s friends with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but doesn’t speak to any other hosts. Especially not Jay Leno, since, according to Conan, there is nothing for the two of them to talk about.

George W. Bush‘s book tour took a swing through Burbank Thursday night, with the former president gamely laughing along as Jay Leno played some of Dubya’s most joked-about presidential moments, including attempting to leave an event in China through a locked door. “Now that was a man without an exit strategy,” joked Bush.

Meghan McCain continued her book tour last night on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (she previously appeared semi-regularly on Leno’s former 10pm show).

She talked candidly about Sarah Palin, being told she had “stripper hair” and she called Leno a jerk.

Celebrity mom Bristol Palin is beginning the media tour for her upcoming appearance on Dancing with the Stars, and last night it landed her on the couch of Jay Leno‘s Tonight Show. Leno went easy the younger Palin, giving her space to dance, laugh, and take a few jabs at her ex Levi Johnston.

For the first time in 10 years, ABC News “Nightline” beat out CBS’ “Late Show with David Letterman” for total viewers, as well as in the A25-54 demographic, in the second quarter. The last time Nightline outperformed Letterman was in 2000.

The late-night news program also had its most second quarter viewers in six years.

TBS is not afraid of doing some collateral good to a competitor in the name of supporting their own talent. Several months removed from the debut of Conan O’Brien‘s new late-night program on their network, TBS is doing some unorthodox advertising, buying up ad space in Hollywood magazine Variety to endorse NBC’s Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien for an Emmy nomination.

The days when Barack Obama only gave Chris Matthews tingles down his leg are long gone. Visiting Jay Leno in a more casual appearance than his daily Hardball stint allows, Matthews expressed his outrage with former vice president Dick Cheney and his ties with Halliburton, as well as BP’s failure to stop the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. The surprise? Not only is he also not happy with the way the White House has handled the spill, he admits President Obama’s behavior on this issue “scares me.”

Conan O’Brien made his return to TV in a much-hyped 60 Minutes interview with Steve Kroft.

It was a decidedly Team Conan segment, and also a surprisingly serious and frank discussion with the comedy host.

Senior Adviser to President Obama David Axelrod was in California last night chatting about his youth and life with the President on Jay Leno‘s Tonight Show. Axelrod was not his usual political self, but instead was cheerfully self-deprecating about his teenage style, his basketball skills, and how close he really is to the President.

Tonight Show bandleader Kevin Eubanks confirmed Monday in an interview with Jay Leno that he’d be leaving the show at the end of May after 18 years with the show – a move first reported in February.

And now we have Eubanks’ replacement, from another network’s popular show – American Idol bandleader Rickey Minor.

Karl Rove found a new venue to promote his book, Courage and Consequence, last night – The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

The lighter venue led to mostly serious discussions, including about yesterday’s “bondage-themed nightclub” story, health care in general, and some very uncomfortable moments of Rove’s early life.