But just 2 points. It's not the "Old Testament" (at least not to us Pharisees, like Roseanne, Jerry Seinfeld, Rabbi Shmuely Boteach, Michael Lerner, et. al.) and Tanakh (its real name) doesn't say "eye for an eye" anywhere. No Jewish court ever poked anyone's eye out, it was a purposeful mistranslation by the guys who produced the King James Version monstrosity.

What is this, the Ann Coulter of the left? All rhetoric and no documentation... this shit may or may not be true but all I can think of is whether Maher expects anyone to take him seriously as a journalist.

I read Salon for news and editorials, not unsourced, inflammatory garbage that barely rises to the level of "writing." Is it any wonder that Salon continually acts shocked that its "breaking" stories never get picked up by the evil MSM? This stuff is as bad as Coulter and probably even more sloppy. Jeez.

thanks, I needed a good laugh.

Where's Joan Walsh? We're letting Maher write: "Most of them young women with very little knowledge of the law, but a very strong sense of doing what they're told."?

I mean, yeah, Regent isn't the best law school in the world at all, but Goodling did pass the bar, so it's not like she's just a bum off the street with a crumpled up piece of paper for a diploma. They really do study law there. If they didn, she wouldn't be able to pass the bar. The school's accredited, too, and not every law school is. They have a 67% bar passage rate.

And what's with the sexism? Regent is 50% female, so I don't know where Maher got this statistic that most of the Regent graduates who work for the Bush administration are women. Sounds to me like he's equating incompetence with womanhood, just a little bit.

But the Regent grads are elite, Bill.

They're the best at being the worst!

(Hilarious - thanks for the laugh!)

Love it.

In fact, the neoconservative program to cripple the federal government was actually instigated by elites - a small subset of elites determined to, as one of them (Norquist? Kristol?) stated, drown government in a bathtub. It's quite ironic that these particular elites have been so successful in branding other, different-thinking elites as. . .gasp. . .elites.

While I totally agree with the argument Bill is making here, I can't help but to find his language needlessly caustic in places, especially in regards to religion. Pat Robertson and his ilk may be whackos, but there are plenty of christians out there who progressives could be reaching out to instead of dismissing outright with arrogant and frankly intolerant statements like "And that's all America needs -- more Christians and more lawyers." If liberals want to take back the word elite, they can't be shooting themselves in the foot like this, falling prey to the very characteristics they are accused of embodying.

I've noted that for a long time, the Republican elite, the Republican moneyed have made Revenge on the Nerds their campaign strategy. Science is dismissed. The only thing that matters is money, and the strategy is to appeal to the least common denominator and demonize the nerds.

US News and World Report for 2007 ranks Messiah College on its list of "top schools" for comprehensive colleges in the North (it ranks 4th in that category)-no, it's not Harvard, but it's also far cry from fourth-tier Regent.

LeftWingPharisee, apparently you've never checked out Deuteronomy 19, verse 21: "Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot."

but all I can think of is whether Maher expects anyone to take him seriously as a journalist.

My guess is that he expects us to take him seriously as a comedian, sort of like Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert, and other political comedians all the way back to Lenny Bruce and his ilk.

Comedians can write, you know. They learned it from a book.

this shit may or may not be true but all I can think of is whether Maher expects anyone to take him seriously as a journalist

Bill Maher was a comedian

This, by definition, means that he needn't be taken seriously as a journalist.

That he happens to uninhibited, insightful and correct of course makes him significantly more valuable than these journalists of which you speak.

It's the elite's excess cosumuption and ever eroding moral compass that piss off the Islamists so much.

If you need me, I'll be getting my hands dirty like a man. Hey Bill: grow.

Please. This is humor. This is Bill Maher. This is his latest "New Rule" - and while it is largely based in fact, he takes some poetic license. Don't lose sight of the reality that he's pointing out: that Ms. Goodling is another Brownie doing a 'heck of a job' straight out of her fundy-ness, just because Maher got the tiering of the school wrong.

If you don't find it funny, the appropriate answer is either (a) "I just didn't think it was funny," or (b) "I don't get it." (b) is probably the braver of the two. Launching into diatribes about how this or that little factoid isn't so factual is not worth the effort.

Oh, and Rosen, "lighten up" specifically applies to you - shove your Anne Coulter BS up your bum. She's in a league of her own; I can't recall anyone, left or right, who ever recommended a genocide be run more efficiently post-1945. She's it, and she's all yours, buddy. As a pure and raw example of the right taken to its worst extreme, there is no comparison. Her sickness is purely a providence of your crowd, pal - and it's simply a choice you yourself have to make: do you really, seriously, want to be associated with trash like that?

Jeez.

T

Bill Maher is a comedian. This is a comic piece. You may or may not find it funny (I laughed my ass off and forwarded it to everybody I could think of, but that's just me), but complaints that it's factually inaccurate or crosses the political correctness line might be a tad misplaced, in my opinion. And to compare it to right-wing Rottweiler Ann Coulter's "work", well, that's classic apples-and-oranges.

If you're unable to make the distinction between political reporting and political humor, take my advice: don't watch the Colbert Report.