DENNIS MILLER: Conservative (or at least libertarian) hero. Here is are some of riffs from Wednesday's Tonight Show with Jay Leno:

-- “Sean Penn, for instance, is urging restraint. What could we possibly say to Sean to get him on board? If only Saddam Hussein was a paparazzi.” (Penn once punched a photographer.)

-- “The only way the French are going in is if we tell them we found truffles in Iraq.”

-- “The French are always reticent to surrender to the wishes of their friends and always more than willing to surrender to the wishes of their enemies.”

He also took on liberals for opposing school vouchers when public schools are a disaster and offered this blast at the ACLU's priorities:

“The ACLU spent this entire holiday season protesting public displays of the nativity scene. Yeah, that's the problem with America right now: Public displays of Christ's birth, that's the problem. It's unbelievable to me. The ACLU will no longer fight for your right to put up a nativity scene, but they'll fight for the right of the local freak who wants to stumble onto the scene and have sex with one of the sheep.”

I always loved Miller when he hosted "Weekend Update" on SNL. He's been the only successful replacement to Chevy Chase's original stint as "anchorman" (27 years ago, when Chase was actually funny). And I guess spending all that time around Al Michaels when the two hosted Monday Night Football really paid off.