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Tavis: It's always a pleasure to welcome Bill Maher to this program. The award-winning comedian is the host of one of the best shows on television: "Real Time with Bill Maher." On February 18th, Bill kicks off his new season on HBO. Guests on the season premiere include Robin Williams and Senator Joe Biden. The show airs Friday nights at 11:00 P.M. Here now a clip from "Real Time with Bill Maher."

Bill Maher: All right, new rules. You can't be famous for nothing. Paris Hilton can't be in the papers anymore, unless she kills someone, marries J.Lo or ODs. Also, her head is too small and she only has one facial expression. I know that's not a rule, but somebody had to say it.

Tavis: I think you ought to do a book called "New Rules."

Maher: We're doing it.

Tavis: Oh, wow. You just took my idea that fast.

Maher: Wow! What a pimp. Yes, it's coming out in the fall or late summer or something like that.

Tavis: How did you enjoy your time off?

Maher: I love time off. I could stay on vacation forever. But I also like to get back to work.

Tavis: Yeah, well, I'm always glad when you come back to see me before you go back to work, because it gives me a chance to throw all the things at you that I wanted to hear you comment on that you did not comment on, because you were taking the time-out.

Maher: Yeah, that's what I miss. When you're off, you can't vent your spleen. Your spleen gets bloated.

Tavis: So the last time you were here, Kerry was still in the thing.

Maher: God, that seems like a long time ago.

Tavis: So Mr. Bush won. What do you have to say about that, Mr. Maher?

Maher: Well, I'm over it, you know. We all had to get over it. I was much more interested in their election in Iraq. Ours seems, you know, ancient history. As I look back on it, it's understandable why Kerry lost, you know. I mean, we were in the heat of it and we sort of understood what Kerry was doing wrong. But looking back, and you think, man, this guy never mentioned the Abu Ghraib scandal. He had those debates. He never mentioned the incompetence. I mean, this Iraqi election, I give it to Bush. He got one right. Of course, as always, Bush does the right thing only after he gets crap for doing the wrong thing. It wasn't his idea to have elections. Sistani made him do it. But OK. I think it's going to change things quite a bit. I really think it's a huge morale booster for those people in Iraq who really want a regular country, and they're going to maybe have a chance of getting it.

Tavis: But these insurgents aren't going anywhere, though, Bill.

Maher: Yeah, but you know what? They're having a civil war, and that's OK. That's the good news. They need to have a civil war. The insurgents aren't going anywhere, but it's not like they're the Vietcong. I don't know if you saw that story, where the Iraqi voters, one of the insurgents blew himself up at a polling place, and all the Iraqis were filing by and they spit on the body. I don't think if that had happened in Vietnam in the Sixties at the Tet offensive, I don't think that the Vietnamese people would have spit on a Vietcong. I think that this is a civil war. It's not a bunch of foreigners. There's some foreigners. It's mostly the people who were running the old regime. It's the Sunnis. They lost. They've been running that country for 100 years. Now they lost. They don't like it. They're sulking, and they're going to sulk for a little more. But I think that's the extent of it, and I think it has a chance to work, which is amazing, because it proves that even when you screw up as badly as they screwed up--'cause they couldn't have done it any worse...it still could work. And so, you know, Bush's rhetoric about freedom, which sounded very sentimental, and he is a sentimentalist, as all Republicans are, which forces us to be more cynical, but there is truth to it. And after that election, it's a little harder to sit back and go, oh, you guys are pie in the sky. Freedom is very powerful. They're right. And the Democrats should never have given up that issue. Freedom. The power of liberty. That was always something Woodrow Wilson, making the world safe for democracy. John F. Kennedy. Pay any price, bear any burden. That was a Democratic thing. Republicans were isolationists, and the Democrats let the Republicans steal that issue.

Tavis: All right, so Karl Rove over the last, what, 48, 72 hours, has been promoted, we hear now, to what is it, Deputy Chief of Staff? I don't know how that changes his job description, because he was running things before. He's still running things. But admit it. Just admit it. Karl Rove is the brightest political strategist in Washington.

Maher: The architect.

Tavis: Yeah. Ha ha ha ha!

Maher: That's what Bush called him--the architect.

Tavis: The architect. How smart is this guy? I know you don't like his politics, but how good is this guy?

Maher: You've got to give it up, absolutely. Because he understood that it's not what people do, it's what people perceive. You know, all of Bush's policies, Clear Skies Initiative, not really about making skies clear, is it? Leave No Child Behind. The Patriot Act. It's just what you name them, you know?

Tavis: Yeah.

Maher: If this guy was in charge of Kristallnacht, he would have called it Take Back the Night. A Kristallnacht joke gets a laugh from Tavis. That's how good this guy is. It's a perfect 11:00 joke.

Tavis: That was a good joke.

Maher: I really enjoyed this at that hour. I don't know if it airs everywhere, it's a perfect cup of tea at that time.

Tavis: I'm up against news, though. What's more important, watching me or watching the news?

Maher: That's local news. Do you watch local news?

Tavis: Local news doesn't count?

Maher: I never watch local news. I mean, there's a fire in Torrance. I'm sorry. It just so doesn't interest me.

Tavis: Breaking news, there's a fire in Torrance.

Maher: I feel bad about it. You know, 20 minutes on how to carve a pumpkin. You know, it's just stupid.

Tavis: I'm glad you said that, because it's a nice segue. Thank you, Mr. Maher. I just saw this survey the other day that I'm sure you saw, about--what was the survey? Young people. So many young people, a significant number, I don't recall the numbers, but you saw it. All these young people who actually get their news from shows like yours, from shows like John Stewart.

Maher: Even more disturbing, something like half of them don't get it that we have free speech in this country. Did you see this?

Tavis: I saw that. Absolutely.

Maher: Like only 83% said unpopular opinions should be legal.

Tavis: Yeah.

Maher: I mean, when did we turn into the Hitler Youth in this country? That's really--that's because they don't teach civics anymore. I've always said that. Even when I went to high school, teaching history was a little passé. You could take mini courses, which meant baloney. You didn't really study what happened and why it was important, and they don't teach civics, and kids don't know, And we're losing the thread from our Constitution. Bush doesn't know the Constitution. Bush doesn't know history. In his inaugural address, he said, and this must really annoy people of color, he said from our founding...-did you hear that statement? From our founding we have guaranteed every woman and man and child matchless--from our founding? Matchless dignity and value? Women? Every man? Give me a break. And that's the President of the United States. I don't understand why you're not madder. Why am I the one getting so angry about it?

Tavis: I was upset about that. What upset me even more or just as much was a few days ago when he met with the Congressional Black Caucus and they asked him if they could count on his support to renew the Voting Rights Act when it expires last year. And the Voting Rights Act, of course, one of the seminal pieces of legislature to ever pass in this country about civil rights. In fact, you know, Lyndon Johnson's hallmark. And the President said I don't know anything about it, but I will look at it when it gets to my desk. So I was like, OK, it's the Voting Rights Act. But he had no clue. But anyway, I digress on that. But I don't want to let you off the hook on this thing. I'm curious. I really do want to know what you make of the fact that so many young people get their news from you.

Maher: Well, better me than--

Tavis: Somehow I knew that was coming. I knew that was coming.

Maher: Than Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity. No, it's terrible. I mean, I always say when I'm asked that, we're like the Monarch notes or the Cliff notes. It's OK, they said in college, to read the Monarch notes and the Cliff notes with the book, not replacing the book. You can't get the news and then the joke all in one bite. You have to understand the news, and then we can joke about it. So, you know, it's a terrible trend.

Tavis: Yeah. This is inside Hollywood talk, but what's the challenge to you? When you get this time off and you're watching all these news pieces and you see all this material out there, what's the challenge that you face to come back on the show for another season and make the stuff fresh, make it good? I mean, continuing to grow this enterprise as a host?

Maher: Keeping it honest. You know, it's very hard, especially right after an election in which I did support the other side, not to fall into the trap, which I see a lot of people fall into, liberals, Democrats, of working backwards from Bush stinks, so how are we going to pee on everything he does? You've got to judge it by--the facts have to come first, you know. If Iraq works, you know, you have to say OK, that's good. That's good. It can't be bad because it makes Bush look good. Like I said, you know, it just proves the power of freedom. You can't forget that he screwed it up as badly as it could be screwed up, but you still have to say, OK, as a big idea, it's--not that it necessarily is going to make us safer. Because certainly that is a question that's out there. Iraq could be a democracy nonpareil in the world, and it still could not accomplish the ultimate goal, which was to make us safer from terrorism. I think we all saw that on 9/11 that people in many Muslim capitals, Saudi Arabia I'm thinking of, they heard about it, they stopped their cars, honked their horns, yeah. They liked it. OK, maybe the reason why we haven't been hit again is because those people who were honking the horns, yeah, they were honking the horns, but they weren't ready to be suicide bombers. Maybe the 19 people who were the suicide bombers on September 11, maybe that's all they really had at the time were ready to take it that far. But what Bin Laden wanted to do with 9/11 was to set a spark, was to set in motion a series of events that would recruit actual suicide bombers. 9/11 didn't do that. But the reaction to 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, I think, did that. It energized the Jihad. It energized his group, and it energized people to actually join up to kill themselves, and that's what we have to worry about. People who are actually going to kill themselves to hurt us.

Tavis: Before I let you get out of here, you admittedly are on the other side, you know, the other side from George Bush and Karl Rove and those people.

Maher: Not about everything.

Tavis: Not everything. All right. I'm glad you said that. Because aside from the Democrats giving the President props when he does deserve it for the things he's done right, you're not running for D.N.C. chair. I'm told that Howard Dean has this wrapped up.

Maher: I'm not even a Democrat.

Tavis: So what should Howard Dean and the Democrats, the other side, do over these next four years?

Maher: Not do what they did in 2000 and 2004, which was try to be Republicans. They need to go the other direction. 2000 and 2004, to me, are the same election. The same strategy. And that strategy is never going to work, that strategy to become Republican light, as people have called it. I think something like--I think the figure I read was 79 million eligible voters didn't vote, even with the bigger turnout than last time. OK, that's a pretty big pool to fish in. You have to get more Democrats. You can't make the swing voters, the people who are already voting Republican, they're never going to vote for people like John Kerry and Al Gore, whoever the Democrats--that base is pretty set. Those aren't people who are up in the air. I don't care how much goose hunting the Democratic candidate does. They're not going to vote for him, OK?

Tavis: Yeah.

Maher: So go the other way. There's a lot more tolerance and liberalism out there than people think. They just don't...the Democratic candidate just doesn't speak to our issues. In the campaign, he never mentioned the environment. This is a big issue for me. The drug war. These are really, really big issues. George Bush, Iraq may work. He still has left three ticking time bombs: the debt, the environment, and homeland security. Those are three big issues that Kerry didn't attack.

Tavis: And I'm certain that on those three big issues, if you tune into "Real Time with Bill Maher," the solutions will be forthcoming. So tune in. Bill, nice to see you.

Maher: Thank you, Tavis.

Tavis: Glad to have you on. Bill Maher, "Real Time" is back, thank God. Up next on this program, award--Academy--try it again. Up next on this program, Academy Award nominee Sophie Okonedo. Stay with us.