When George W. bush spent the beginning of his term on his ranch in Crawford, Texas, the majority of the media didn't blink and eye. But, to the team at Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart", the President's solitude - and the ranch's proximity to Waco - set off whistles and alarms.

"What's he doing there? Does he think he's our leader? Is he armed?" the correspondents asked.

Since its inception in 1996, "The Daily Show" has provided welcome relief to the often over-hyped and melodramatic news coverage America is used to. "The Daily Show" has won an Emmy Award for writing (in a variety, music, or comedy series) and has also won a Peabody Award for excellence in journalism, and it shows no signs of stopping -- or mercy. No one knows this better than Supervising Producer Stewart Bailey, who plays a big role in giving the show its daily dose of funny.

"I specifically try to come up with ideas and develop ideas for pieces we can shoot for the show," Bailey said. "I look for something in the news that we can parody, mostly we shoot stories with an absurd premise"

The show is run just like any other news show, long hours and all. Bailey often spends ten hours a day working to help put the show together. This means they hold a lot of group meetings to figure out how to make a story funny, which pieces they should do in studio with the correspondents, and decide on the dialogue that goes on between the correspondents and host, Jon Stewart.

"Most of my time is spent in creative pursuit," Bailey said. "Professionally, it's very satisfying."

Bailey got into producing on a whim, when he moved to New York City after graduationg from Kansas State University with a degree in Journalism. As a paige at NBC studios, Bailey had such responsibilities as taking audience members up to the studio and giving David Letterman the key to his dressing room. Eventually, Bailey moved on the be a receptionist at "Saturday Night Live", and a guest coordinator on MTV's "The Jon Stewart Show". He scheduled such guests as a three-year-old boy who could form a United States map by eating slices of cheese. In 1996, bailey was hired as a field producer for the up and coming "Daily Show", and had the resposibility of producing segments with the correspondents. Since then, he has worked his way up to Supervising Producer.

As Supervising Producer, Bailey has the unique task of finding people to do stories about. He admits that sometimes they'll invent people for this purpose, but often they will run across them on the Internet, or see something in a regular news story that catches their attention.

"We'll see a news story with something odd in it and then do a story on that," Bailey said. "We think the strange pursuit is the story."

"The Daily Show" team shows no mercy when it comes to making fun of real news networks and stories. Though recent news events, such as the anthrax attacks, have somewhat limited the show in what is OK to make fun of, it doesn't stop them from using the over-hyped media network coverage of events to point to an inner truth.

"When networks like CNN use the anthrax thing and obviously play off of people's fears, then we can make fun of that, " Bailey said. "We did a segment about the food drops [in Afghanistan] and how they weren't gourmet food - the kind of stuff that plays on America's ignorance."

Such skewering has made the Daily Show part of mainstream comedy, but after September 11, 2001, some things are still off limits.

"When Bush was elected, we thought we'd find a healthy living of of that," Bailey said. "But now we have to be careful, people are so much more sensititve."

Finding guests for the show has become a bit more of a challenge. With a lot of celebrities' reluctance to visit New York City, where the show is taped, the show has often turned to more substantial guests. However, Bailey admits that this practice is also due in part to the more serious nature of national news.

"It's a little harder to talk to a celebrity guest when so much of what we're focusing on is not entertainment and light, frilly things," Bailey said. "It's hard to talk about a movie when no one is following it.."

The newer, more knowledgeable guests are not only a welcome change to many viewers, but also to host, Jon Stewart.

"He's actually more interested in talking to actual newsmakers, truth be told. He's actually very versatile. if he were host of an actual news show he could do it and enjoy it and still be funny."

According to Bailey, the"energetic and super fun" Stewart isn't like other aloof talk show hosts, preferring instead to get involved in every aspect of the show. Bailey also says that Stewart is "just hilarious."

"We may think something is not very funny, but then we'll tell Jon and he'll say it and it will be hilarious. He's really very talented."

Though it may be fake, the stress of doing a daily news show can often catch up to the staff. Luckily, the abundance of laughter helps to relieve the stress.

"It works like a new show, and it feels like a news show, only we don't get bogged down with details and fact checking," Baily said. "We'd much rather get bogged down with lunch."