Bill Maher on Friday night's "Real Time" made something crystal clear that conservatives have known for decades: Liberal means never having to say you're sorry.

Update at end of post includes response from the Catholic League.

Having on last Friday's program (as reported by my colleague Matthew Balan) "stated that the Pope 'used to be a Nazi,'" Maher was supposed to apologize for his transgression.

Well, if the nonsense he uttered last evening is what liberals call an apology, it should act as a grander indictment as to what's wrong with the extreme-left in our nation (video embedded upper-right courtesy our friend Ms Underestimated):

Bill Maher, true to form on his "Real Time" program on HBO on Friday, went on a tirade against Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church, only days before the Pope’s visit to the U.S.. He stated that the Pope "used to be a Nazi" and compared him to a cult leader. He then went on to call the Church a "child-abusing religious cult" and "the Bear Stearns of organized pedophilia." "And that’s the Church’s attitude: 'We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it,' which is fine, far be it from me to criticize religion."

Following a profanity-tinged one-liner concerning the raid on the Texas compound of Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Maher quipped, "In fact, whenever a cult leader sets himself up as God’s infallible wingman here on Earth, lock away the kids. Which is why I’d like to tip off law enforcement to an even larger child-abusing religious cult. Its leader also has a compound, and this guy not only operates outside the bounds of the law, but he used to be a Nazi and he wears funny hats. That’s right, the Pope is coming to America this week and ladies, he’s single!" At the "funny hat" line, Maher displayed a picture of Pope Benedict wearing a wide-brimmed hat called a saturno

On Monday, the Drudge Report released a picture of Barack Obama dressed as a Somali elder claiming it had been circulated by "stressed Clinton staffers."

Four days later, on HBO's "Real Time," host Bill Maher strongly implied that the picture had been leaked by conservatives.

Although Obama and his campaign representatives strongly lashed out at Hillary Clinton and her supporters for "shameful offensive fear-mongering," Maher, during his "New Rules" segment Friday, never once mentioned the picture's apparent connection to the former first lady:

The hatred from supposedly compassionate and open-minded Hollywoodans is something to behold, isn't it?

After all, just imagine despising a radio talk show host so much that you would suggest, on national television, that he should die of a drug overdose.

Alas, such was the case Friday evening when HBO's Bill Maher actually asked guest P.J. O'Rourke, who was talking about Rush Limbaugh's use of the prescription drug OxyContin (disgusting question after the jump):

Video/audio: Click image to play Flash video. MP3 audio. (Video also available here courtesy our friend Ms Underestimated.)

The right wing's “big heist” in Iraq led by bankers who “are screwing everyone” all “started with Ronald Reagan crushing the poor, crushing the unions,” actor/comedian Richard Belzer bizarrely claimed Friday night on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher before proceeding to smear Rudy Giuliani as a “fascist thug with a comb-over trying to suppress his speech impediment.” [This item includes an accurate quotation of a vulgarity.]

Belzer, who plays “Detective John Munch” on NBC's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, appeared on the show's panel with musician Herbie Hancock and ABC News reporter Martha Raddatz. When Hancock asserted $80 billion is unaccounted for in Iraq, Belzer launched into this tirade:

This is a big heist, this is a big heist. The right wing is in power, the bankers are screwing everyone -- the oil companies, Halliburton -- this is no fucking mystery. These people have been after this. It started with Reagan crushing the poor, crushing the unions, rewarding people, putting them into heads of certain departments of the government and then disassembling those departments because they have contempt for the government.

People that watch HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" are infinitely aware that the host is not only an atheist, but is also an antitheist, meaning that he hates religion.

No finer example of Maher's disdain for theism and Judeo-Christian principles occurred on Friday's installment of "Real Time" when he actually declared, "At least half of the [Ten] Commandments are stupid!"

This came moments after Maher proudly stated, "If I had a child, the last book I would ever give to teach morality would be the Bible, especially the Old Testament." This led one of his guests to say that Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, and John McCain should be stoned for committing adultery.

I kid you not.

Here's the first astounding exchange on the subject of religion (video available here courtesy our friend Ms Underestimated):

A truly extraordinary event happened on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" Friday evening: the host, in the first show of the new season delayed as a result of the Hollywood writers' strike, began the program bashing Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) for faking a teary moment in a New Hampshire diner Monday.

Maybe even more astounding, Hillary's charade was a central focus of Maher's monologue, as well as the entire program during which he questioned the sanity of voters who bought into her crying game hook, line and sinker.

Readers are cautioned to hold on tightly to their seats, for this was how Friday's show began (video available here courtesy our friend Ms Underestimated):

Insisting he's “not a conspiracy theorist,” Bill Maher, on the Friday night season debut of his HBO show, suggested that because Republicans prefer to run against Hillary Clinton than Barack Obama they engineered her victory in New Hampshire's Democratic primary. Later on Real Time with Bill Maher, former ABC News reporter/anchor Catherine Crier claimed “you have to work really hard to find a truly liberal” politician and “Hillary Clinton and John Edwards and Barack Obama are not raging liberals.”

Maher opened the panel discussion, with Tony Snow, Crier and Mark Cuban, by observing how he found it “odd” that polls showed Obama ahead in New Hampshire, yet Clinton won, and “it does bother me that a private company runs the polling machines and that only they certainly seem to know what went on.” A couple of minutes later, Maher noted that “in crime they always ask...'who profits?'” Looking at Snow, he then pondered:

Who profits from the Hillary victory? They don't want to run against Obama. Your party does not want to run against him. They want to run against Hillary Clinton and now they have a race with her in it.

A bemused Snow called Maher's reasoning “totally wacko!” and “completely wacked” as Maher contended Republicans have thrown races before: “They did it to Ed Muskie.”

Video (28 secs): Windows Media (1 MB), plus MP3 audio (170 KB). Click and play Flash video in the MRC.org posting.

It appears the good folks at HBO must have been extremely concerned that "Real Time" host Bill Maher was going to lose many of his viewers as a result of his tossing 9/11 truthers from the audience two weeks ago.

After all, Maher even admitted at the opening of the discussion segment of Friday's program, albeit almost apologetically, "I'm not going to pretend that we have ideological balance on this panel."

Ideological balance? Are you kidding?

Here were Maher's attendees this fine Friday evening in no specific order:

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, the old saying goes. It's certainly applicable to liberal talk show host Bill Maher, who got a taste of venom from the far-left 9/11 conspiracy crowd during a recent taping of his "Real Time" program before a live studio audience.

Video (2:55): Real (2.14 MB) and Windows (1.79 MB), plus MP3 audio (1.33 MB).

MRC president and NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell reacted to the development in a segment on the October 22 "Fox & Friends" program. Said Bozell:

Something truly shocking happened on Friday's "Real Time" on HBO.

Host Bill Maher called 9/11 truthers "lunatics," and demanded they stop requesting him "raise this ridiculous topic on this show and start asking [their] doctor if Paxil is right for [them]."

I kid you not.

During Maher's "New Rules" segment, he actually stated (video available here, relevant section begins at 1:46):

“Artist/Activist” Mos Def, a hip-hop musician and actor, matched Rosie O'Donnell Friday night on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher in espousing a bizarre 9/11 theory which absolves Osama bin Laden as he also characterized George Washington and the Catholic church as “terrorists,” maintained that terrorists have legitimate grievances and trashed America as the threat to the world. [Be warned, this posting includes numerous profanities in accurate quotations.] Def contended that “George Washington and all them dudes was terrorists as far as the Queen was concerned,” charged that “the Catholic church's stance about child molestation is a form of terrorism in and of itself” and when asked by Maher if bin Laden was behind destroying the World Trade Center, declared “absolutely not.” Def asserted that “highly-educated people in all areas of science have spoken on the fishiness around the whole 9/11 theory.”

A few minutes later, Def defended terrorism as a response to America's misdeeds: “Let's deal with the fact that there are valid reasons even to a lot of terrorists' arguments, quote unquote, terrorists' arguments about why are they frustrated with colonial presence, imperial presence. The way that this government has pursued its foreign interests has been meddlesome, murderously meddlesome.” Directing his ire at President Bush, Def asserted that “this administration and this government has sought to suppress everyone and no one has sought to suppress America in quite the same way,” yet the U.S. goes “to these places and fucking kill[s] people.”

The “Scrapbook” section in next week's (September 10 cover date) Weekly Standard magazine excoriates actor Tim Robbins for charging, on last week's (August 24) Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, that, referring to Iraq, “we've killed over 400,000 of their citizens.” The un-bylined article commented: “He's wrong, of course. American soldiers have not been slaughtering 300 Iraqis a day for the last four years. Even for one of Hollywood's most feculent personalities, this is an appalling slander of U.S. troops.” Citing the Iraq Body Count Web site, the magazine pointed out that “the antiwar group's 'maximum count'” of “'civilian deaths caused by coalition military action and by military or paramilitary responses to the coalition presence (e.g. insurgent and terrorist attacks)'” as well as “'excess civilian deaths caused by criminal action resulting from the breakdown in law and order which followed the coalition invasion,'” stands at 77,555, “one-fifth the number concocted by Robbins's overactive imagination.”

As the new season of HBO's "Real Time" began Friday night, I watched with great trepidation, especially given host Bill Maher's disgraceful special on that network back in July wherein he spent virtually two-thirds of the program bashing President Bush and anyone with an "R" next to his/her name.

With that in mind, my stomach started turning during his opening monologue as he made joke after joke about our president. I was put in further unease as he introduced his first guest, New York Times correspondent Damien Cave, currently in Baghdad, who seemed likely invited on to speak the liberal party line about how the surge is failing, and how things are much worse in Iraq than the Administration wants to admit.

Miraculously, my concerns were all for naught, for Cave, much like the Times' Baghdad bureau chief John Burns, sees good things happening in Iraq, which appeared to catch Maher off guard. For instance, when Maher asked, "What is the morale of our troops, because I know President Bush always says that the troops are steadfastly all behind him - uh, I have my doubts. What is your view?"

Cave's response was clearly not what Maher was expecting (video available here courtesy of our friend Ms. Underestimated):