{"id":1656,"date":"2005-05-24T15:20:35","date_gmt":"2005-05-24T19:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2005\/05\/off_the_air\/"},"modified":"2005-05-24T15:20:35","modified_gmt":"2005-05-24T19:20:35","slug":"off_the_air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2005\/05\/off_the_air\/","title":{"rendered":"Off The Air"},"content":{"rendered":"

Free speech? Are you kidding? We’re at war<\/a>!<\/p>\n

A congressman says comedian Bill Maher’s comment that the U.S. military has already recruited all the “low-lying fruit” is possibly treasonous and at least grounds to cancel the show.
\nRep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., takes issue with remarks on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, first aired May 13, in which Maher points out the Army missed its recruiting goal by 42 percent in April.
\n“More people joined the Michael Jackson fan club,” Maher said. “We’ve done picked all the low-lying Lynndie England fruit, and now we need warm bodies.”
\n. . .
\n“I think it borders on treason,” Bachus said. “In treason, one definition is to undermine the effort or national security of our country.”
\n. . .
\n“I don’t want (Maher) prosecuted,” Bachus said. “I want him off the air.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s great we have these kind of people running the country. I didn’t see the aforementioned comment, but the Michael Jackson reference pretty strongly suggests that the statement was made in humor–or treasonous humor, if you will.
\nI’m getting tired of rightists breaking out the “treason” card whenever someone says something too critical of America or the “war on terror.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Free speech? Are you kidding? We’re at war! A congressman says comedian Bill Maher’s comment that the U.S. military has already recruited all the “low-lying fruit” is possibly treasonous and at least grounds to cancel the show. Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., takes issue with remarks on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, first aired May […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1656","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1656\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}