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Stephen Colbert took on the Heritage Foundation and Jason Richwine, the author of their racist so-called "immigration study" -- which made the claim that "the average IQ of immigrants in the United States is substantially lower than that of the white native population, and the difference is likely to persist over several generations" -- as only he can on his show this Tuesday evening.

As Stephen noted, Heritage is attempting to put some distance between themselves and Richwine now that he's resigned. Case in point being their VP of communications, Mike Gonzales, who put up a blog post stating:

Dr. Richwine did not shape the methodology or the policy recommendations in the Heritage paper... The dissertation was written while Dr. Richwine was a student at Harvard, supervised and approved by a committee of respected scholars... Its findings do not reflect the positions of The Heritage Foundation or the conclusions of our study...

Colbert wrapped things up by explaining how they're attempting to have it both ways with that ridiculous statement:

COLBERT: Now, Heritage is saying they find no credence in Richwine's dissertation, which they are careful to point out was "supervised and approved by respected scholars" at Harvard. In other words, Richwine's paper, which says that today's Hispanic immigrants have low IQs and will for several generations, dooming them to failure is reprehensible.

And had no influence on this paper, co-written by the same guy, which says Hispanic immigrants are a burdensome underclass and will be for several generations, because they're doomed to failure.

Because this one is based on hard numbers, unlike this one, which is an offensive screed with no credibility, approved by Harvard, so it must be pretty good.

These two papers are totally different. It's like apple pickers and orange pickers... which by the way, we desperately need.

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Your quote of the day from Coalition to Stop Gun Violence's Ladd Everitt when asked by Melissa-Harris Perry about the NRA's incoming president, Jim Porter:

EVERITT: If you love Ted Nugent, you're going to love the new incoming president of the NRA, Jim Porter. This guy basically could have walked right out of a militia camp.

Oh joy! Just what we need. Someone at the NRA more extreme than crazy Wayne LaPierre. Here's more on this wingnut from Hunter at Kos: NRA elevates crackpot conspiracy theorist to be their new president:

It looks like the NRA has no intention of toning down the batshit crazy, and calls for "responsible NRA leadership" just got shot in the thigh and left to bleed out behind the ol' shed. The new NRA president (the job rotates every two years, presumably because maintaining such a high level of indignant batshit crazy is a high-effort job) is current NRA vice president Jim Porter, who ascends to the job because apparently every last member of the NRA leadership is entirely off their rockers. Let's meet Jim, shall we?

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A teacher in Texas has invoked her own racism in a defense against charges that she fondled an African-American student in her first grade class at Northwest Preparatory Academy Charter School in Humble.

According to a criminal complaint obtained by the Houston Chronicle, the 7-year-old girl said that 61-year-old Esther Irene Stokes sent all of the other students out of the room on March 1 and then touched her "private part" on the outside of her clothes.

“The victim said that she was in the classroom alone with the teacher and that the teacher touched her on the outside of her clothes, on what she called her ‘private part,’ her vaginal area,” Humble Police Department Detective J. Blanchard explained on Tuesday.

Prosecutors said that after failing a polygraph test, Stokes insisted to Humble police that she had not touched the girl "on any part of her body."

"She doesn’t like to even touch the black children on their hand, she shies away when they try to hug her -- she admitted to being prejudiced," Blanchard said.

The complaint stated that Stokes "doesn't like black students because she was prejudiced" and "has little to no interaction" with her accuser.

The girl also told police that she asked the teacher to stop touching her and was made to stand out in the hall without any lunch -- but Stokes also denied that.

Northwest Preparatory Academy Charter School Principal Paul A. Hardin told investigators that cafeteria records showed that the girl ate breakfast but not lunch on March 1.

Stokes' attorney, Patty Maginnis, said that any racist comments made by here client were "not proof that any crime has been committed."

"I would consider that just a personal opinion," the lawyer noted. "The facts of the case will determine that she is innocent."

Stokes was fired on Tuesday, according to charter holder Miracle Educational Systems, which operates the school.

"The employee involved was immediately placed on administrative leave as soon as the complaint was received, and the matter was investigated," a statement said. "As a result of the Academy’s investigation, the staff member in question has been terminated."

Stokes is free on $10,000 bond. She is scheduled to appear in court on May 21.

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Fox News’ resident psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow told a group of tea partiers over the weekend that they had been "enslaved" by taxes and "slaves always revolt."

At a Saturday "Tax Day Tea Party Rally" in Boston, Ablow explained that the government wanted to take away guns because "having firearms means you have the ability to defend yourself." Video of the event was uploaded on Sunday.

"The thing with slaves is you can't keep 'em, they always revolt," the Fox News contributor opined. "Enslaved by the notion of ever-increasing taxes, told that we can't spend our money -- even the money that we do take home -- the way we want to. Told that adulthood starts at 25, if ever. Told that nobody should really be able to hold a firearm and know that he or she can defend his family or her family if push comes to shove. That can't stand because slaves always revolt."

"No one can shackle the American spirit because inside each of us and the reason we love America is because we love the capacity of people to outperform, we rely on it... So, don't let anybody tell you that we won't win because the truth, my friends, always wins."

(h/t: Media Matters)

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Jon Stewart wasn't the only one this week that let Sen. Rand Paul have it for his failed attempt at minority outreach at Howard University, where he assumed the students there didn't know anything about their own history and were treated to him attempting to gloss over that whole era where Southern whites joined the Republican party because they were opposed to civil rights legislation passed by the Democrats.

As Harris-Perry explained: African Americans don’t need a history lesson from Rand Paul:

I read a lot of letters this week, but don’t worry–I also found time to write one. This one inspired by an especially awkward lecture at Howard University. And since my dad and two of my sisters attended Howard, I feel a little possessive of it and paid careful attention to Republican Sen. Rand Paul’s address.

Dear Sen. Paul,

It’s me, Melissa.

Apparently, you had a bit of trepidation about your visit to the land of the Bison this week. You said that some thought you were “either brave or crazy” to speak on campus.

Really?

Because it strikes me as precisely the mission of a university to give students an opportunity to hear dissenting viewpoints, to interact with political leaders, and to address the major issues of our day. I wouldn’t characterize it as brave or crazy, just part of Howard’s mission. But maybe you were nervous because as a libertarian you know your ideology stands opposed to the impulse that gave birth to Howard in the first place.

Howard University was established by the federal government. Following the Civil War, Congress recognized our nation’s collective responsibility to offer educational opportunities to the Freedmen and the subsequent generations of children that would be born into freedom. So Congress, in an act of collective responsibility toward young people, established Howard and later authorized an annual federal appropriations for its construction, development, improvement and maintenance.

But you left out that story of big-government Republicanism in your fascinating revisionist history. This moment was a gem, though: “I think what happened during the Great Depression was that African Americans understood that Republicans did champion citizenship and voting rights but they became impatient because they wanted economic emancipation… The Democrats promised equalizing outcome. Everybody will get something. through unlimited federal assistance.”

Um, OK: so your theory is African American voters left the Republican Party because they didn’t get enough free stuff.

Let me offer a different take.

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Chris Hayes took a shot at him the night before and this Thursday, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart took his turn skewering Rand Paul for his appearance at Howard University. Paul asked the audience there how his party has managed to go from being one that elected the first twenty African American congressmen to becoming a party that now loses ninety percent of their vote, and Stewart was happy to answer that question for Sen. Paul.

Stewart proceeded to explain for Paul that maybe that pesky Southern Strategy employed by Nixon and St. Ronnie and Bush Sr. -- all the way up to recent times and presidential contender Gov. Rick Perry and his Niggerhead Ranch -- might tend to alienate a voting bloc.

Jon continued by going through baby Paul's train wreck of a speech at Howard which you can read more about here: The history Rand Paul struggles to understand:

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Fox's Bill O'Reilly opened up his show this Tuesday evening by using the death of former Mouseketeer Annette Funicello to opine over whether America was somehow "a better country" back in those days when, as Media Matters noted, white America was "kind of unified" and if that "made it easier for society to function."

I'm fairly sure that it did make it "easier for society to function" if you were a white male, like Bill-O. If you were a woman, or a minority... well... maybe not so much.

O'Reilly was also opining during the segment for the days back when America was "more wholesome." Pardon me if I have a little bit of trouble hearing from someone who is apparently in the middle of a divorce right now and can't control his temper because of it on that topic.

I don't want to hear about the "need to be more wholesome" from someone who had to settle a sexual harrassment suit with one of their former employees.

I don't want to hear about the "need to be more wholesome" from someone who was accused of harassing his ex-wife's boyfriend.

I don't want to hear about the "need to be more wholesome" from someone who is capable of visiting Sylvia's restaurant with the Rev. Al and making the ridiculous statement he did about the patrons and their so-called m-f**king iced tea.

Sadly, we're not likely to see O'Reilly off the air any time soon, along with his fellow Nixon-loving cheerleader here, Monica Crowley who was ready to take up his cause and argue with Alan Colmes. It's sad that the two of them here just literally proved what many of us have known all along about Fox and that is, they'd be more than happy to take most of the country back to the '50's socially and rolling back civil rights. Just don't bring back those tax rates. That would be treasonous!

h/t Media Matters

So much for this clown going away quietly any time soon after he stepped in it on Hannity's show last week. Rather than admit that some of what came out of his mouth during his interview with Hannity might (to put it charitably) be considered offensive by wide swaths of our population in the United States, Ben Carson decided to double down instead.

Ben Carson Goes On The Offensive, Lashes Out At "Racist" Critics:

Dr. Ben Carson has pivoted from apologizing "if anybody was offended" by his anti-gay comments to attacking his critics, some of whom he says are "racist[s]" who are trying to smear him as a bigot in order to silence him.

Carson, who has been lauded by the conservative media and treated to dozens of Fox News appearances over the past few months, lashed out at his critics during an April 1 interview on The Mark Levin Show. [...]

After LGBT medical students called for Carson's replacement as the commencement speaker for the class of 2013, he attempted to claim that he hadn't been "equating" gays with pedophiles or those who engage in bestiality, while apologizing "if anybody was offended." He also said he would be willing to step down as commencement speaker.

But on Levin's show, Carson went on the offensive, saying that the criticism he has received proves that he's right that "political correctness is threatening to destroy our nation because it puts a muzzle over honest conversation." He added that "the attacks against me have been so vicious because I represent an existential threat" to his critics, who he says "take my words, misinterpret them, and try to make it seem that I'm a bigot."

After Levin claimed that Carson has been "attacked also, in many respects, because of your race" because "a lot of white liberals" don't like black conservatives, Carson replied, "Well, they're the most racist people there are. Because you know, they put you in a little category, a little box, 'you have to think this way, how could you dare come off the plantation?'"

As the Media Matters post noted, he's right there in Rush Limbaugh territory now. Bravo Dr. Carson. I didn't think it was possible for this guy to marginalize himself any further or faster than he has already with his recent media appearances, but he's managed to do it with this interview. Quite an accomplishment, given Fox was just attempting to sell him as a presidential candidate anyone should take seriously not long ago.

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If you've got HBO and did not get a chance to watch their documentary, The Loving Story this week, it reairs in May. In the wake of the two hearings by the Supreme Court on gay marriage, the film serves as a stark reminder for how we're likely to be viewed by future generations for the rhetoric and animosity we're seeing to same-sex couples being allowed to be married today.

Here's more on the documentary from Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones: "The Loving Story": How an Interracial Couple Changed a Nation:

The most striking thing about Mildred and Richard Loving is that they never wanted to be known. They didn't want to change history or face down racism. They just wanted to come home to Virginia to be near their families. The Lovings weren't radicals. They were just two people in love—one of them a taciturn white guy described by one of their lawyers as a "redneck," the other a sweet, soft-spoken young woman of black and American Indian ancestry.

When the The Loving Story makes its national debut on HBO on Valentine's Day, it will be the first time many Americans have met this couple. They are the namesake of the landmark 1967 Supreme Court case that struck down the anti-miscegenation laws still on the books in 16 states some 13 years after school segregation was deemed unconstitutional. These laws constituted one of the last formal vestiges of the Jim Crow era, and this film shows for the first time what it took to bring them down.

Even as they changed America, the Lovings were never a household name. After getting married in Washington, DC, in June 1958, they simply returned to their home in Central Point, Virginia. Mildred was unaware, she said, of her state's "Racial Integrity Act," a 1924 law forbidding interracial marriage—although she later added that she thought her husband knew about it but didn't figure they'd be persecuted.

Just over a month after the Lovings' homecoming, police raided their place at 2 a.m., arrested the couple, and threw them in jail. Leon Bazile, a judge for the Caroline County Circuit Court, convicted them on felony charges. "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay, and red, and he placed them on separate continents," the judge wrote. "The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." Read on...

Mediaite had something interesting posted on the same topic, which is a quiz to see if readers can tell the difference between actual anti-interracial and anti-gay marriage quotes. As they noted:

Whether it’s condemning homosexuality as “unnatural” and “immoral,” or comparing gay relationships to “armed robbery” and “marrying your dog,” or simply “thumping the Bible” as the primary means to argument, many of the opponents of same-sex marriage sound an awful lot like those who so vocally opposed miscegenation, the marriage between races.

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I don't know about anyone else, but I think one of the last people I want to hear from when it comes to Don Young's remark about his dad's "50-60 wetbacks" and how this is going to harm the Republicans and their joke of a "minority outreach program" is former Santorum communications director, Hogan Gidley.

Rather than being run out of town on a rail for inflicting the likes of Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum on the rest of the country, MSNBC has chosen to make this guy a regular on many of their daytime shows, and Thomas Roberts' in particular. So here we are with a man who helped bring us Mr. Man-on-dog, I don't want to make "blah people's lives better," Obama's going to bow to more Muslims, being asked for his sage advice now on how Republicans can now connect with minority voters.