I really liked this episode. That Aussie guy knew his stuff and Cornel West made a whole lot more sense this time around. Kinda sad there are people like Ron Christie that exist.

Christie is a "talking points robot". I think both sides have them. They simply stick their fingers in their ears, and then just repeat the same stuff over and over on every question.

The Aussie guy knows his stuff, but he's also a tad unstable. I'm sure it's due to being in Iraq for so long, but I kept expecting him to flip the table over and start screaming.

Yeah good points. I thought the Aussie was either gonna give West a kiss or tackle him to the floor.

This past episode was pretty awful. Patterson came off awkward. The Don Draper looking dude didn't seem to add much to the discussion. I did like Alex Wagner having the balls to call out the 2nd amendment. Wish she had went further and compared the U.S. gun deaths to that of England. Bill Engvall's bumper sticker argument 'if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will carry guns' is so painfully prehistoric.

Other than that, not much to see.

You're SO right, but that sad part of all these shows is that people like Christie still gets asked back over and over again. Pick a random person from this forum and they'd do a better job not looking like a fool. I make a good living and he probably makes high 6 figures for doing his dog and pony routine and I have no idea why either party would want a guy like that speaking/working for them.

I do feel bad for the Aussie guy. He does appear shell-shocked all to hell (losing Lara Logan probably didn't help). He used to give great reports and in other interviews he was far more stable and articulate, but he's seemed to get worse each time I've seen him.

Glad the show is ending next week. I think I watch now simply because I still like Maher personally. But he's actually better on other people's shows than he is on his own. Even New Rules has gotten shorter, usually less funny, and the final, more serious ones are even getting pretty lame. He used to have some really good ones in previous seasons that could close even a bad show on a high note.

I have no idea what he said, but I'm guessing he does have a point. I'm not saying we all need to carry guns to protect ourselves from the bad people and if we're not allowed to carry guns, then all of us will get killed because we won't be able to protect ourselves, but the criminals aren't going to follow the laws anyway, so why punish the people that actually go through the proper steps to obtain a firearm?

Go ahead and ban all guns...the criminals will still have them and won't think twice about the fact that guns are "illegal".

do people who think like that guest does that if there is no second amendemnet then that would stop gun violence, are there really people that dense ?

Engvall compromised on the issue and said he believed automatic weapons where you pull the trigger and 60 (or whatever) rounds a second come out should not be covered by the 2nd Amendment.

I'm a liberal, and I believe hand guns and shot guns should be legal, but guns such as an AK47, M16, etc. have no place in regular citizen's hands. If you don't have a uniform but are carrying one of those, I think the police should have the right to shoot first and ask questions 2nd.

Just my opinion, and I'm sure some will disagree.

For the sake of getting things done in America, which the Republicans aren't doing, let's just say a liberal like me sat across from a conservative and agreed to keep certain guns legal and other guns illegal.

So, when that really conservative and not very smart (He likes Herman Cain for President, 'nuff said) comedian said he'd be ok with banning certain kinds of guns, that's when Bill SHOULD have said, "The people on YOUR side, who YOU vote for, would NEVER vote to ban a single gun, so why do you vote for people who don't really represent you?"

The majority of Republicans WANT an increase in taxes on millionaires and such an increase would not get a single Republican vote in the House or Senate. So much for representative democracy.

I'm not posting to debate with conservatives about guns or taxes. The point I'm making is that the real point isn't just about guns, it's that even the people on the left and the right (the citizens who WOULD be able to strike deals) are completely ignored by most of their reps and certainly more so by the Republicans with Obama in office.

That would have been a nice discussion to have. Not to have some right wing, conservative comedian to say he'd be ok with compromise. Of course he would, so would the majority of conservatives. But we never get any compromise and it didn't even come up in the discussion, which kind of made the entire debate a waste of time. Things that have been said before on Maher's show many times before, but Bill just lets these things go, which is why the show fails to be about anything of substance and is just a modest hour of "liberal" talk and some jokes.

It used to be better than that.

Well, I think the VAST majority of the United States is actually fairly middle of the road. Just about everybody leans left or right and many people lean more to one side, but most of us are actually pretty middle. Of course there are the 10% or whatever extreme lefties or righties though. Our representatives, unfortunately, typically are much more extreme. I'll always vote Republican, but there are many issues I believe in that would actually make me a Democrat. Most of our representatives are all or nothing. If they're a Republican, then they're conservative on EVERYTHING. If they're a Democrat they're liberal on EVERYTHING.

Is there such thing as a fiscal conservative and social liberal? That's what I would like to see, but I can't imagine a candidate like that would ever get elected because he/she would be too conservative for the Democrats and too liberal for the Republicans. It sucks that our representatives don't represent the majority because the majority is fairly middle of the road while our representatives are usually much more extreme.

I think that, unfortunately, Obama is pretty middle of the road.

I don't know what Obama is...other than shitty.

I have to agree.

Yes. Me. Isn't that what Jesse Ventura was? It's what he claimed to be.

In Bill's defense, it would have been as pointless as pointing out what Obama did on the environment, saying most Democrats don't agree, and asking why they vote for him. There's never going to be a 1:1 matchup between candidate and every voting constituent. You choose the lesser of subjective evils.

yes, ron paul and gary johnson

Many people have certain issues that trump other issues. Might be taxes, abortion, guns, whatever.

Someone might be pro-choice and want to pay lower taxes, and the lower tax issue trumps the abortion issue so they will vote for anti-abortion politicians who will lower their taxes over pro-choice politicians who will raise or maintain current tax levels.

Proper steps meaning walking into any gun show and buying an AK47 without even showing ID or getting any background check? Yeah, system works great!

Ron Paul is pro-life. Hardly a socially liberal position.

I agree you shouldn't be able to just walk up and buy an AK47. Nobody, but the military or police or whatever should have automatics. It's just that Joe Blow Gangster will find a way to get one no matter what.

One thing that I find inconsistent about the popular Libertarian view of limited interpretations of the Constitution (including all of its amendments, not just the first 10) based on "original intent" is that they then do a 180 and have an expanded interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.

The original intent of the 2nd Amendment was basically to establish that the then common state-based militias were kept separate from the new federal government. That's why the only thing in the whole amendment deemed "Necessary" is the well-regulated militias which each of the states had back then. So if a state wanted to arm its militia to the teeth, it had the power to do so. But if a state conversely wanted to ban guns, it also had the power to do so. It was just a restriction on the federal government that basically left regulating guns (which, according to original intent, meant only muskets and firelock guns) to the states (i.e. "the free state" in the amendment refers to each of the states comprising the United States, not the nation as a whole). The whole thing was intended as a state's rights related amendment (original intent).

And it's also important to note that, in the 18th century, the term to "bear arms" almost always meant "military service" - i.e. as a part of those well-regulated state militias. So the limited "origin intent" interpretation would be something like this:
That's the limited interpretation based on original intent. I'm not saying an expansive view is wrong, but just that claiming a limited "original intent" interpretation of the Constitution should also include a limited "original intent" interpretation of the 2nd Amendment as well.

But that's never the case with Libertarians. Of course, an easy way to trap a Libertarian in their expansive interpretation of the 2nd Amendment is to ask if they think the right to keep arms also includes the right to keep nuclear arms because those are also "arms" after all. I find that they all seem to be fine with that particular "infringement" on their rights.

No disrespect to any religious person intended. I respect anyone's views.

However, this is one of the many reasons I think we are failing not only as a country, but just as people that should be looking out for one another.

There are many people who vote, and this is just one example of that, who are poor, often live in the south, have no real chance at upward mobility, have failing schooling systems, etc, and they will vote for ANY Republican because the Republican party is the party of God.

They'll vote against all their self interests because the Republican, who may very well be screwing a mule while watching gay porn, just because they talk a good game about the Lord.

If you vote on one issue like that or you vote for Democrats simply because of abortion, you're a moron. I'll be the first to agree that both sides don't provide many good options right now, but if we don't demand more from our politicians than having them be able to answer "correctly" on one or two issues, we're just f*cked in my opinion.

Despite what anyone might think about Bush, those years were filled with elections that were about who was the most patriotic candidate. What did that get us? A bunch of clowns who let our country slide into its worst economic mess since the great depression and probably the most bought and paid for congress in our nation's history. What did wearing that American flag lapel get us?

I guess my point is that this isn't the politics forum and I don't need, nor want to debate whether people should or shouldn't have AK-47s or whether people making a million dollars a year should be paying slightly higher federal taxes right now. I stated before if you put 10 people for just this forum from both the conservative side and the progressive side, they could come up with a lot of "common sense" solutions to many of these issues than ANY of the people in our own congress. It's a damned shame and I think Maher, ironic as it might be, is too politically correct on his own show.

He clearly represents a progressive viewpoint and everyone who watches the show knows this. So he might as well push the limits and get people to be uncomfortable if he feels they're just using talking points on his show. Not to mention, while I feel Maher is a pretty smart man, he's often not as prepared as he should be and he's way too polite to people. He's kind of like the way Jay Leno is with guests. When you watch Leno, you know he's just another person who wants to kiss the butt of celebrities. When you watch Letterman (he's mellowed a bit with age), you know, at the end of the day, he doesn't really care if he offends a "star." Bill seems to not want to offend to the point of hurting the show. Maybe that's another problem when you seem to be able to only get a certain group of guests that rotate around and far too often repeat. I don't care how intelligent he might be or how poetic or even that he often takes stands that are exactly in line with my political beliefs, I don't want to hear Cornwell West speak again for a long time.

The best shows are when the panelists surprise you and actually get really involved with the debate without being arrogant or preachy. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen very often anymore. I really only watch because there's really nothing on, I do like Bill Maher personally, and it's still mildly interesting most of the time.

Season finale is tonight. They usually return in February.

Guests: Barney Frank, Common, Keith Ellison, Chris Matthews, and Andrew Sullivan. Pretty good group to end this season. I hope Chris is on the panel, but since he's promoting his new book about JFK, he might be the 1 on 1 guest tonight.

I thought this was still a good season. I'm still a big fan of the show and will continue to watch it. I was hoping to see Ben Affleck this year. He is a terrific and knowledgeable guest. But he hasn't been on since the 2008 elections were close to occurring. And his directing will likely prevent him from being on next year. Hopefully they'll have some new guests. And please don't bring back P.J. O'Rourke.

I've been disappointed by this season. There were a few highlights but mostly pretty meh.

I have to disagree with dolphinboy about making his guests uncomfortable. He may not push the panel to the brink of fist fights or walking off set but I don't think he softballs it either. He flat out tells people when they are wrong. My only fault with Maher is that he (at least used to) kisses Obama's ass too much. I understand he's liberal but it would be nice if he weren't such a bullet point democrat (the same thing he jokes on conservatives doing).

I will always be a fan of Bill Maher. I've seen him do stand up live 4 times and loved it every time.

But this show just isn't funny anymore. It seems to go further downhill every season. Or maybe it's just me.

I guess Maher is still having problems booking conservatives.

Sullivan isn't a liberal. But Maher has said before that sometimes he doesn't want conservatives on the show. Plenty of times he's had 2 on the panel before. But since it was the season finale, I can see him wanting a mostly liberal panel on the show.