Bill Maher on Leno: 'Ethnic Cleansing' at the Border, Bush the 'Idiot'

Also from Michelle Humphrey's bag of Tuesday night TV was HBO talk show host Bill Maher making his usual cracks about conservative haters and how the world is ruined by religion. MRC intern Chadd Clark did the transcribing, and took special notice to this crack on immigration:

Maher: Half of the Republicans are, you know, pro-business when immigration, illegal immigration is good for business, and half of them are for ethnic cleansing, so it's really tough...[laughter] Bush is in the pro-business side. That's what explains a lot of what he does. He's always for business. That's why he was for the Arabs taking over the ports. Remember that?"

Maybe he should have considered spacing out the no-Arabs-at-the-ports thing, and not put it right after the "ethnic cleansing" crack. Earlier, Maher joked about Mel Gibson and how you should get a "designated Nazi" if you're going to get drunk and hate Jews, which led right into Maher's predictable anti-religion lecture:

"I'm not a big fan of religion, and I – Mel Gibson, a very religious guy. And I think there is a line between the certitude and arrogance that religion gives to people because when you think you are a hundred million percent sure you know what happens after you die, which you can never be, I think there's a line between that and 'I own Malibu.' And, you think this may not affect people's lives, but I'll give you an example – stem cell research, which could help a lot of people who are really alive. But, we can't have stem cell research in America because George Bush and people like that who are very religious are so sure that they know exactly when life begins. It is the moment that the sperm hits the hoo-ha. They are sure there is a third person in that room. Before a man can light a cigarette, there is a third person in that room."

Finally, a predictable attack on Bush as an "idiot" for his terrorist-surveillance program:

I'm not really with Bush on wiretapping. I just understand this idiot does not know how to fight the War on Terror. He doesn't choose the same tools to fight that I would. I certainly wouldn't have attacked the wrong country, and started torturing people, and made the whole world against us, and turned homeland security into just another pork barrel project. Do you realize that since 9/11, the same amount of weapons that got through the airport security before 9/11 get through now. The exact same amount. 22 percent of knives, whatever it is, 48 percent of guns, 38 percent of black, round, bowling ball bombs with a lit fuse with the word Acme on the side....So I'm not for wiretapping, but I understand that this is the tool this idiot has picked to fight the war, okay. And maybe, as far as phone conversations go, we should just accept the fact that we don't have privacy just the way we do with e-mail."