Responding to the shooting last week at Sandy Hook Elementary School, National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre accused the media of “rewarding” mass killers with “wall-to-wall” coverage and called news organizations “silent enablers, if not co-conspirators” in the violence.

After being ambushed, kidnapped and held captive in Syria for five days, NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel and his production crew were freed after a firefight between the kidnappers and a rebel group and were safely escorted back to Turkey Tuesday morning, according to an NBC News report.

“The Daily Show” as it exists today nearly came undone when Jon Stewart clashed with the show’s staff after taking over as host in 1999. When Stewart took the reins, he didn’t realize “a lot of the people who worked there were assholes,” he told Stephen Colbert Friday in an on-stage conversation benefiting the Montclair Film Festival in New Jersey.

When Senate Republicans blocked the ratification of a United Nations treaty aimed at protecting the rights of disabled people around the world, Jon Stewart hoped the Senate had hit rock bottom. But last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell filibustered his own bill to allow the President to raise the debt ceiling.

Jon Stewart and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) butted heads on Thursday over the Republican Party’s relationship with the federal government. Earlier on Thursday Christie was in Washington requesting additional federal funds for rebuilding efforts after Hurricane Sandy. That same day, the governor vetoed a bill that would have set up a state-run health care exchange in line with “Obamacare.”

What can be learned from the demise of The Daily? News Corporation announced on Monday that the iPad publication will shut its digital doors on Dec. 15, less than two years after Rupert Murdoch hailed it as a “model for how stories are told and consumed in this digital age.”