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Earlier this week, The Daily Show decided to take on the Tucson Unified school board and their decision to outlaw Mexican-American studies in their classrooms.

Here's more from the LA Times on the board's decision -- Mexican American studies: 'Daily Show' segment strikes a nerve:

After that stint on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” the Tucson Unified school board is probably wishing it had hired a media consultant before trying to explain its position on the district’s controversial Mexican American Studies program.

Normally, when people are featured on a television show, they call family and friends and let them know the time and channel. That might not be the case for board member Michael Hicks, who appeared in a segment about the ethnic studies controversy.

The Tucson school board voted to end the program after Arizona's education chief had ruled the district in violation of a controversial state law banning classes designed for a particular ethnic group or that "promote the overthrow of the U.S. government."

Defenders of the Mexican American Studies program have said it does no such thing. Some board members said they voted to discontinue the program under duress because the legislation allowed the state to withhold funding from the district unless it complied with the law.

The law and the board's vote -- and protests by Latino students -- have prompted fiery discussions in Tucson and across the state. Into that atmosphere stepped Hicks when he explained his vote on "The Daily Show."

"My concern was a lot of the radical ideas that they were teaching in these classes," Hicks is quoted as saying.

"Telling these kids that this is their land, the whites took it over and the only way to get out from beneath the gringo — which is the white man — is by bloodshed."

The segment quotes him as saying he has never gone to any of the classrooms and based his opinions on "hearsay."

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Marriage equality in New York rests on a Staten Island Republican, and an American man pretends to be a Syrian lesbian blogger.

John Oliver says Muslims are allowed to put a mosque near Ground Zero, just like Catholics can build a church next to a playground.

Another part showed Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Iman behind the project, who FOX are now trying to make into some kind of boogeyman. Nevermind that a few months earlier he had appeared on FOX talking about plans for the Islamic cultural center.

Asshats.

The Daily Show have captured this farce better than the so-called legitimate news networks. But that's nothing new, is it?

Thom Hartmann gives a history lesson on the origins of the original Tea Party, which bears no resemblance to the teabaggers out there and the issues they are protesting today. I would imagine this sounds like the teacher in the Peanuts series to most of them if they were forced to listen to it.

Rachel Maddow ponders the extent of her new Senator's interest in history given this statement:

Brown: I'm a history buff. I love the Museum of Natural History.

We really might have another Sarah Palin on our hands if he keeps this up. I'm sure that won't stop Tweety's man crush on Brown though -- or the rest of the media for that matter.

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From Fareed Zakaria's GPS Jan. 17, 2010. This is one of the few segments I've seen from anyone in the mainstream media that even starts to touch on some of the reasons for the extreme poverty in that existed in Haiti well before this terrible tragedy hit their country.

ZAKARIA: We begin today with Haiti. I want to go beyond the terrible images that you've seen in the last days, tragic as they are, and try to help us understand this tragedy and how it came to be this way.

Everybody surely knows by now that Haiti is the poorest country in the entire Western Hemisphere. But that's not the whole story. You see, Haiti has been marked by violence, turmoil and tragedy from the start -- until recently, when things turned up, only to be dashed by this earthquake. And that start informed the tragedies that have befallen this country ever since.

So, a quick history lesson, one that I think is fascinating on its own merits and is essential to understanding Haiti today.

The island that came to be known as Hispaniola was discovered by Europeans when Christopher Columbus landed there in 1492. Two hundred years later, in 1697, the French gained control of the western third of this island. African slaves, growing sugar and coffee and tobacco there, became a veritable gold mine for the French.

But then, in 1791, the slaves revolted. It's been called the Vietnam War of its time, a ragtag band of insurgents defeating one of the greatest militaries of the age. None other than Napoleon Bonaparte sent tens of thousands of his French troops. They all tried to beat back the rebellion, and they all failed.

On New Year's Day, 1804, the last defeated French ship left the island, and the slaves declared victory. And Haiti, the nation that emerged, is the only nation in the entire world that was founded by slaves.

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May 08, 2009 News Corp