Our next president shouldn’t be a person of faith but a person of doubt. So says Bill Maher, one of the country's most outspoken doubters. His new film, Religulous, directed by Borat’s Larry Charles, follows the irreverent humorist as he travels the globe talking to people about God and religion. Maher and the crew employed self-described guerrilla filming to get their shots (at the Vatican, at the Wailing Wall), and the prospect of watching them in action seems too good (and controversial and potentially offensive) to resist.

While the film didn’t hit its anticipated Easter release, it's currently slated for a June 20 opening. Here’s Maher talking to Larry King about the film.

For all of Bill Maher's dull by-the-numbers Hollywood-style liberalism (less Locke and Mill, more food-nazi-obsessed-with-global-warming-and-kneejerk-Bush-bashing), he sometimes does get it right. Last week, when a group of 9/11 Truthers infiltrated his audience and disrupted the broadcast (see video below), he got as aggro as I've ever seen him, and that's saying quite a bit for a fellow not unknown for his propensity to get hot under his (generally hideously colored and striped) collar.

It's really about time more people took his approach to the 9/11 Truth movement. The name itself is testament to its dishonest nature--9/11 Truth is as concerned with truth as FOX News is with being "fair and balanced." Truth to them is whatever fits the desired end--given the rather sinister nature of that desired end (to prove that the American government plotted a controlled demolition of the WTC) one might call it wish-thinking for the paranoiac. When Popular Mechanics published a few 9/11 truths of their own, one can be sure that few Truther arguments underwent any meaningful overhaul. But then again, therapy isn't instantaneous for these kinds of disorders.

Richard Linkater's seminal indie film Slacker may contain one of the most spot-on portrayals (video below as well) of the conspiracy theorist--a fellow who hasn't much better to do and who is also under the very mistaken impression that the rest of the world cares to hear the latest ingenious theory. He's also a guy who, when it comes down to it, would probably do less theorizing if the blonde former classmate he accosted with Ruby and Oswald theories would actually sleep with him. A chicken and egg dilemma hatches: is he into this because he can't get laid, or can he not get laid because he talks so much boring nonsense? As with most such questions it's unmistakably a cycle.

This character appears in a film that perfectly sketched the contours of the post Cold War, postmodern generation. While Linklater's JFK-obsessed slacker was preoccupied with a past event, his problem can be seen as absolutely contemporary. It's hard to 9/11 Truth movement as apart from the age in which it arose--one where the most basic notions of truth assessment are widely misunderstood, or worse, completely unknown. The Truthers' basic argument--that planes didn't bring down the towers alone, but a far more elaborate schema was in place, eschews entirely the notion of parsimony. If Carl Sagan were here today, he might say as he did in his famous Cosmos commentary on religion, 'Why not save a step?' Big, fuel-filled airplanes crash into tall buildings. Fire burns hot. Why pile on all the extra? (Perhaps its time for an Occam Education Movement aimed at the classroom...)

French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan thought of paranoia as the disorder that originally lead humans to seek knowledge. At its heart, he said, it is the need to ascribe order to a traumatic situation. In the process, the paranoiac imagines forces acting that aren't there, envisions actors acting that don't exist. But whether 9/11 Truth types are paranoiacs, products of postmodernism, or just a crowd of socially inept folks with too much time on their hands (or a combination of the three), the Bill Maher approach is the best approach. Asskicking may not be precisely the way, but a fervent and vociferous rebuke is desirable. The likening of their groans to cattle moos was more spot-on than I think Maher thought at the time. Once people start imagining their neighbors as enemies, their enemies as inconsequential, and the truth as whatever they want it to be, they may as well be off to the slaughterhouse.

Cardinal Roger Mahony: LA Times' Steve Lopez says the settlement was all about keeping the cardinal off the stand

• Bill Maher on the Catholic Church shelling out $660 million in child molestation suits. [The Huffington Post]
• An archdiocese and 508 victims. [San Francisco Chronicle]
• It wasn't about those kids--the Church cared about protecting Cardinal Mahony. [The Los Angeles Times]
• Israel set to release 250 Palestinian prisoners on July 20th. [BBC]
• R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet," a soap-opera-soul-saga, to be continued...[Rolling Stone]
• Speaking of sagas, the latest from Washington on David “Diaperman” Vitter. [Wonkette]
• Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, Hamid al Bayati, stays in Trump Tower for $22,000/month. [The New York Post]
• Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid threatens filibuster to move ahead with troop withdrawal plans. [Truthdig]

Isaac Chotiner at TNR's The Plank gets it exactly right:

The most telling/pathetic moment on a recent episode occurred when Ayaan Hirsi Ali blasted the Bush administration for attacking Afghanistan rather than Saudi Arabia after 9/11 (she apparently misspoke: Hirsi Ali was clearly in favor of military action in Afghanistan, too). Sure enough, the audience burst into applause. Why? I'd like to believe it's because the House of Saud runs an autocratic state and funds terrorism. I think it's a bit more likely, however, that the real reason has to do with America's closness to Saudi Arabia and the Bush family's closeness to the Saudi royals.

Still, you can be sure if Bush had attacked Saudi Arabia after 9/11, the same audience would be clapping for whatever guest was speaking out against the war.

Can't these shows function without a gallery of tiresome fans?

The fans are not just tiresome, they're irretrievably stupid. You could satellite-feed a message from Osama calling the president less than bright and still expect at least a few giggles and claps.

Anything said by Maher with a big-insight-coming-up deepening of timbre is met with yelps and cheers. (I once heard applause after Maher came right out and said Iraq was better off under Saddam Hussein. Even if you agree with this sentiment, and I don't, doesn't it call for solemn appraisal rather than trotter-flapping approbation?)

From that kitsch, CentCom soundstage (how's that for declaring antiwar bona fides?) to the groaning and predictable "New Rules," Maher has made a minor art out of getting people to believe that banality is radical and that he's a martyr for mouthing the opinions of every editorialist in the country. What's really going on here?

Recall that he lost "Politically Incorrect" after 9/11 for saying that Mohammed Atta and company were brave, not cowardly, for killing themselves along with thousands of American civilians. Cowardice, said Maher, is firing rockets from a battleship into some foreign ministry or third world citadel. Even Rush Limbaugh -- normally the point-man on tactical combat and just war theory -- found merit in this contrast.

Ari Fleischer was then asked about Maher's chatter and Fleischer's terrifyingly Orwellian reply (to a different question, by the way) was along the lines of, "We all should watch what we say." This was interpreted by our hero of late night as a genuine threat and the cause for his subsequent unemployment. That ABC, owned by Disney, lost advertising revenue because of Maher of course had nothing to do with the network's decision to lose him, too.

Check out some of his talk not just immediately following this incident, but long after it, and decide for yourself whether Maher's opposition to the administration is rooted entirely in principle and not in vendetta. Then ask yourself if the unfunny comic with a TimesSelect account has spent the last few years battling a bygone White House flack as a distraction from the real hunt for Mickey Mouse.

Man of the Year: Robin Williams as a Daily Show-esque anchor who runs for president and wins. I've got a daschund bouncing on a trampoline trying to snatch that concept from way up there in the tall oak tree it's in. Here's all you need to see from the trailer:

At least the war on drugs will be over quick.