BILL MAHER - "FREE SPEECH" COMMENTATOR BLAMES NONBELIEVERS FOR SCHOOL VIOLENCE

"FREE SPEECH" COMMENTATOR BLAMES NONBELIEVERS FOR SCHOOL VIOLENCE

Two weeks after TV personality Bill Maher apologized for claiming that CBS had refused to allow him to speak out against organized religion on the "Free Speech" segment of The CBS Evening News, the newscast presented a religious activist who claimed that school violence was caused by persons who advocate "expelling God from the school." Producers of the program invited Brian Rohrbough, who lost his son in the 1999 Columbine school massacre, to speak on the program in the wake of the murder of five girls at an Amish school in Pennsylvania. Rohrbough claimed that the schools are replacing God with evolution and teaching that there is "no right or wrong. And I assure you the murder of innocent children is always wrong, including by abortion." Rome Harman, executive director of the newscast, told today's (Wednesday) Washington Post, "I knew that his remarks would be controversial, perhaps even offensive to some. I also knew that some people in our audience would agree with him. I also thought to myself, 'This is "Free Speech." We don't tell people what to say or what to think.'" But one writer posted this message on the CBS website: "How could you use an unspeakable tragedy to give a right-wing flat-earth nut job a podium?"

04/10/2006