South Carolina Rep Shouts “You Lie” as Obama Speaks on Health Care.

President Barack Obama’s advisors had promised that his speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday evening to address the state of his healthcare reform plans would be an impassioned and powerful one and there are few that would say that he did not deliver.

One major point he made was his desire that the opposing sides of the debate could “disagree without being disagreeable.” At least one member of the audience did not seem to agree with that statement though.

Rep. Joe Wilson, who is from South Carolina, interrupted the speech when he shouted “ You Lie!” and punctuated his point with an aggressive looking finger point when President Obama said that his healthcare reforms would not include coverage for illegal aliens. The tantrum caused the President to pause and direct his attention to the heckler, responding “That’s not true” before carrying on with his prepared remarks.

Seated behind the President both Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi looked visibly shocked by the outburst and after the speech was over Senator John McCain, the man defeated in the Presidential election by Obama, called for Rep. Wilson to make an immediate public apology.

Rep Wilson did make a formal statement some time later saying that "While I disagree with the president's statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to the president for this lack of civility." It is reported that he also called the White House personally to apologize. The man who took the call, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, accepted the apology on behalf of the President according to senior Obama aides.

Although his was the most noticeable act of displeasure Rep Wilson was not the only one to resort to some less than civil behavior during the President’s 45 minute speech.

Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas wore a sign fastened around his neck for the course of the speech which read “What Bill?” and when President Obama called on Republicans in the audience to share their reform ideas with him a small group of them raised stacks of paper above their heads.

Online reaction to Rep Wilson’s action by the public was swift and mainly derogatory. Within just a few minutes of his being identified as the heckler someone altered his Wikipedia entry to read "He is a [expletive] that called the President of the United States a liar on national television and has no respect for the office he holds." The site’s editors quickly removed the entry only for it to be replaced by another, even harsher one. They then decided to disable the editing feature for the entry for the time being.

On Twitter user after user posted Tweets encouraging the public to contact Rep. Wilson’s office to express their displeasure. However very quickly visitors to the official http://www.joewilson.house.gov/ website found it disabled and the phone lines to his office either rang busy or rang on and on without the usual voicemail message cutting in.