On Thursday night, Jon Stewart lingered on Sarah Palin's noncandidacy. The real losers, he pointed out, were those who'd been persuaded to donate to Palin's political action committee, SarahPAC, thinking that she was actually running. "But those are the rules that are set up," he said. "The only way that the little scheme would be dishonorable or shady is if Palin had known all along what her decision was, yet continued to dangle her indecision as a lure to unsuspecting donors." He then cued up this Bristol Palin video from last June, the one where she said Palin "definitely knows [but] ... some things just need to stay in the family." After playing the clip, the host ended with an email scamming reference: "That kind of takes [Palin's candidacy] out of the self-involved territory and puts it into the Nigerian prince territory."

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Erik Hayden