The Daily Show airs Monday through Thursday at 11pm / 10c.

So last night Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) had a couple questions for Hizzoner, including this one: "Mayor, how are you going to feel when it's your daughter that's kidnapped at school by a terrorist?"

Gotta admit, I don't understand where Shadegg's going with this.

I mean, if anybody can afford to pay a couple kidnap ransoms, it's Mike Bloomberg.

You beat the shit out of him with a tire iron before he gets a chance to slam himself into whatever World Trade Center happens to be nearby…

The Rev. Alexios Marakis, visiting from Greece, had performed a blessing of a retired Greek priest in the West Shore area before accidentally exiting I-275 into downtown Monday evening, police said. Marakis followed cars into the Seaport Channelside Apartments on Twiggs Street and got out to ask for help…

[U.S. Marines reservist Jasen] Bruce grabbed a tire iron from the trunk, hit Marakis four times over the head and chased him about three blocks before pinning the priest, police said…

When officers arrived, police say, Bruce told them he heard the man say "Allahu Akbar" – Arabic for "God is great." "That's what they say before they blow you up," Bruce said, according to police.

What lesson are we, as a nation, to take away from this sad and disturbing story. Well, I think there's only one lesson we can take away from it.

The terrorists are infiltrating our Greek Orthodox Churches!

Update: As I'm sure you're all aware by now, no situation is content with simply being ridiculous nowadays. Nope. It all has to be super-idiotic-ridiculous on WTF steroids. All of it!

With that in mind, this American Hero who beat up the priest — Jasen Bruce (of the wrongly spelled first name) — appears to be some kind of erotic model [NSFW?].

Why is this relevant? It's not. But this is how the world works now. And — let's face facts — if you're going get beaten to within an inch of your life by some xenophobic maniac, it might as well be a super-hunky xenophobic maniac.

(Thanks for the tip, bose.)

Lt. Col. Allen West (Ret), who is running for Congress in Florida's 22nd District, released a statement on Friday morning that heavily insinuated that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan — the soldier responsible for the Fort Hood killings — was a Muslim extremist.

"This enemy preys on downtrodden soldiers and teaches them extremism will lift them up," West said, in a statement titled "Terrorists Are Infiltrating Military". "Our soldiers are being brainwashed."…

In releasing his statement, West appears to be the first politician to claim a link between Malik Hasan's shooting rampage and Islamic extremism or terrorism. Reports on the incident aren't 100 percent clear. But they generally suggest that Malik Hasan was acting out of intense stress over a pending deployment to Iraq. That said, authorities have not ruled out that Hasan was acting on the behest of an unidentified radical group. Hasan was a lifelong Muslim who worked at a psychiatric hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.

Please bear in mind that Col. West managed to win this award without the use of nearly any pertinent information or time for serious analysis.

Number one, though, is so much worse…

As the House convened Monday afternoon, Ms. [Virginia] Foxx, a North Carolina Republican, lashed out at the proposal Democrats are trying to bring to the floor for a vote by the weekend, hitting it for potentially using tax dollars to pay for abortions, among other things…

"I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that bill passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country," Ms. Foxx said, adding later: "It is a bad bill and the American people should be frightened of it."

You know what we should do? We should give health care to the terrorists. Or would that violate the Geneva Conventions?

That's why Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is on a three day trip to Pakistan. And based on her rhetoric, she's taken a page from Dr. Phil for these talks…

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday she did not come to Pakistan for "happy talk."

Her three-day trip is aimed at getting frank, open discussions going about the fight against terrorism, and that includes presenting U.S. concerns about how much success Pakistan is having, she said.

In an interview with CNN, Clinton said it's time to "clear the air" with a key U.S. ally. She added, "I don't think the way you deal with negative feelings is to pretend they're not there."

There ya go. Pervez Musharraf won't be able to counter that. Especially not if she follows it up with a "So, you first gained power via a military coup… How's that working out for you?" Then when he's all, "You're not the same country, I did photo ops with eight years ago," she can be all "I can't help you, Pakistan. Only you can help you."

Faced with that kind of diplomacy, Musharraf's only option would be to Springer it up with a "It's my country, I do what I want!"

And that, my friends, is how we win this war on terror.

"The last time we left Afghanistan, and we abandoned Pakistan," she said, "that territory became the very territory on which Al Qaeda trained and attacked us on September 11th. So our national security interests are very much tied up in not letting Afghanistan fail again and become a safe haven for terrorists.

"It's that simple," she declared, "if you want another terrorist attack in the U.S., abandon Afghanistan."

Or… you can just decide to ignore CIA memos on expected terrorist activity on U.S. soil.

Either method should work fine.

People seemed to respond well when I posted this last year, so I thought I'd do it again. It's the September 20, 2001 episode of The Daily Show in it's entirety. I've never been able to put any meaningful words together about 9/11 and this really isn't the venue for that anyway, so I'll just say I hope you get something out of watching this, be it comfort, enjoyment or simply a welcome distraction.

Continue watching.

9/11 truly is the saddest day of the year. I usually have a hard time even concentrating on anything all until midnight.