Obama, the first sitting president to appear on the show (The Tonight Show With Jay Leno), told Leno he was stunned when he learned of the bonuses that insurance giant AIG was paying to retain certain employees as it goes through a restructuring with taxpayer money. Obama said the payments raise moral and ethical problems and that the administration’s going to do everything it can to get them back.

As he did a day earlier at a fairgrounds meeting in Costa Mesa, Calif., Obama encountered largely adoring and enthusiastic crowds at the Miguel Contreras Learning Center in downtown L.A. Attendees had placed their names on an online site and were selected by lottery.

“I was inspired,” said Tonantzin Castro, 31, of Pasadena, who said she was unemployed and looking to Obama for help for the jobless. “He’s not a miracle worker; it was just his general ideas of hope. Watching the news is so demoralizing, and you start to lose that hope.”

Across the street from the school’s gym where the president spoke, several hundred people waved a variety of signs in favor of legalizing illegal immigrants. [ READ MORE ]

Keith Olbermann Previews Obama’s Leno Visit With Craig Ferguson

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