Lately, my pick for the funniest/cleverest program on television would be The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. In terms of sheer gutsy comedy, it makes Letterman, Leno and all the other late night guys look like Bob Hope performing in front of a president he just played golf with. If you haven't watched it lately and you get Comedy Central, give it a peek. One enormous source of humor has merely been to run clips of our president trying to explain something, and then cut to Stewart looking utterly stunned or aghast. (Those who wish to convince me this is disrespectful of the presidency will have to show me proof they felt that way when TV comics were playing with that clip of Clinton denying he'd had sex with "that woman.")
All of the correspondents on The Daily Show are very funny, especially Stephen Colbert and Lewis Black. The latter may well be the best "new" stand-up comedian of the last dozen years. I laughed a lot at his recent commentary on protest demonstrations. The Comedy Central website currently has it online but they make it beastly difficult to link directly to a clip. If you have RealPlayer installed and if I've figured out how to do this correctly, this link should bring it up on your screen. If it doesn't, go to the Comedy Central website, go to the page for The Daily Show, select "Featured Videos," then look for Lewis Black. It's worth the scavenger hunt.