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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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Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint on Monday said that he opposed a bipartisan plan for comprehensive immigration reform because "unlawful immigrants" could live "another 50 years" and take advantage of government benefits that they earned by paying taxes.

At a press conference on Monday, the Heritage Foundation released a report that claimed the immigration reform bill offered by the "Gang of Eight" senators would cost Americans $6.3 trillion.

"The number over the 50-year lifespan of an amnesty for unlawful immigrants, it's $6.3 trillion to the American taxpayer," DeMint told Fox News host Martha MacCallum prior to the press conference. "And we know over time that this is going to increase more debt, increase taxes. That has a depressing effect on our economy. And we know that unlawful immigrants -- once that they have amnesty -- are going to replace the jobs of many Americans and depress their salaries."

"So there is no way you can look at this and conclude that it's good for the American taxpayer, and that includes immigrants who are here lawfully."

MacCallum noted that most benefits would not be available to immigrants for 13 years under the proposed plan.

"I'll believe that when I see it," the former South Carolina senator quipped. "Even if they follow through, unlawful immigrants are already receiving many benefits. A lot of their children are legal American citizens, whether its public education or Medicaid. But if you just look at a 13-year window when the life expectancy of unlawful immigrants goes another 50 years and once they get on Social Security and Medicare -- I mean, the average cost of an unlawful immigrant is hundreds of thousands of dollars."

DeMint added that he was all for immigration reform as long as "lower-skilled, less-educated" immigrants were excluded from the plan.

"In 1960, the average immigrant had about the same education and skill level of an American citizen. Today, immigrants have -- they're four times less likely to even have a high school diploma. And now with all of our welfare benefits, the arithmetic for immigration is totally different."

(h/t: Twitter/@igorvolsky)

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If anyone didn't think this guy was quite insufferable enough during his interview on Piers Morgan last month, you're in luck. You can be treated to almost an entire hour of his whining about how liberals are keeping the poor conservative white man down.

This was a talk he gave at Jim DeMint's wingnut Heritage Foundation a couple of weeks ago.

Yes, Breitbart protege Ben Shapiro has got a book to sell, so naturally he's being promoted by the likes of C-SPAN, which sadly leans way, way to the right with their Book TV series. They ended up treating their viewers to what was one long exercise in projection, claiming that liberals just want to silence conservatives, making ridiculous claims that conservatives are somehow shut out of the political debate in the United States, and are being oppressed by some secret liberal cabal out there who makes sure no one can hear their message.

[Insert laughter here.]

In Shapiro's world, Media Matters has a whole lot more influence than I'd give them credit for. Plus, there's some grand conspiracy to keep conservatives out of Hollywood and our educational institutions. And you can't dare call a conservative a racist ever... never, ever... and don't dare call voter suppression racist or mention anything about their policies being racist, because then you're just pandering and trying to pick on them and YOU JUST BETTER SHUT UP.

And heaven forbid someone picked on poor ALEC and forced them to run away from the "stand your ground" laws. Yes, and Al Sharpton is a big bad meanie who, along with the rest of the "liberal media," tried to frame George Zimmerman.

I don't know if anyone's got the stomach for the rest of his pity party, but you can watch the entire event here. I'll leave everyone with a quote from one of my fellow contributors here at C&L, Mugsy, who relayed his feelings on this pity party of Shapiro's by email:

As noted, classic "projection". I've been saying for years that "if a conservative accuses you of something, it's only because they either did the same thing themselves or would if they were in your shoes."

Ding, ding, ding, ding... give that man a medal. That's exactly what we had here -- in such blatant form that it's almost laughable, or it would be, if not for the fact that there are still people who consider this guy some kind of "serious" conservative thinker.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the new fresh face of the Republican party -- which, oddly enough, looks just like the old face of the Republican party.

If they need any help with their "rebranding" effort, I sincerely hope they give this guy a call. I'm sure it will work out just as well for them as the recent efforts by Eric Cantor and Bobby Jindal.

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Former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) on Sunday turned the subject to abortion and "unborn children" after being asked about "racist comments" that hurt the Republican Party brand.

During a panel segment on NBC's Meet the Press, host David Gregory asked DeMint to respond to former Secretary of State Colin Powell's charge that there was a "dark vein of intolerance" in the Republican Party because people like former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had accused President Barack Obama of "shucking and jiving."

"Spending more than we're bringing in and this debt is a moral argument that we need to connect with the American people," the incoming Heritage Foundation president explained. "The reason that I left Congress is because I don't believe the politicians are going to solve our problems unless the American people force them to. They're going to keep spending and borrowing in Washington, they're going to keep implementing policies... that hurt minorities. They're worse off."

"And we can go to Detroit and Philadelphia and Chicago where these liberal progressive policies have been in place for decades, and you see Latinos and African-Americans in failing schools, with high unemployment," he continued. "What we're going to do and I know Gov. [Bobby] Jindal is going to do along with a lot of other governors is show the success stories where the right ideas are implemented, and we're going to show the failures in Detroit and Philadelphia and L.A."

NAACP president Ben Jealous, however, argued that Republicans would be better off "if they're willing to give up on the gasoline that's been the old Dixiecrat rhetoric they've indulged in for the last 40 years."

"They need to stop," Jealous explained. "They need to say, 'We have an old brand as the Grand Old Party, the party of Lincoln, the party of Kemp, the party of people who united this country again and again. Let's be that and let's stop trying to be these Dixiecrats because it just doesn't work for anybody anymore.'"

Pressing DeMint, Gregory asked if he regretted "some of the comments about abortion in this last cycle, about rape, about, again, what Colin Powell thought were veiled racist comments from the party?"

The former South Carolina senator ignored the reference to "racist comments," instead responding with a rant about fetal personhood.

"The fact that we are losing over 3,000 unborn children a day is an important issue," DeMint opined. "But Republicans or conservatives should not engage in a wish list about exceptions for abortion when the other side will not even agree that we have real people, real human beings. And we need to fight the battle where it should be fought. Life is important. We know from all the new technology and improved sonograms that we do have a baby."

"Instead of just offering my opinion on some hypothetical debate about exceptions for abortions, we need to move it back and particularly work with the states that are fighting just for the personhood of the child. And if we can start there, I think America will move with us."

"Little different than the question about rhetoric and how it reaches voters," Gregory noted as he moved on to the next topic.

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Just in case anyone didn't think that Michelle Malkin's display on Fox & Friends was quite enough with them carrying water for Wayne LaPierre and the NRA, they decided to bring in for good measure right wing rag The Daily Caller co-founder, and heir to the Swanson food fortune, Tucker Carlson, to lay the blame for the school shooting at Sandy Hook at the feet of President Obama, Democrats and Hollywood liberals. Because we all know that guns don't kill people, people who watch violent movies do.

Tucker Carlson: Obama Ignores Violent Media Because ‘Hollywood’ Donates To The Democratic Party:

The Daily Caller’sTucker Carlson appeared on Fox & Friends this Saturday and slammed President Obama for refusing to acknowledge the media’s role in our violent culture for fear of losing “Hollywood” donations. “Hollywood is one of the largest donors to the Democratic Party,” Carlson said, and because of this, the Obama administration ignores the violent media.

Host Dave Briggs asked Carlson if he thought Hollywood was “hypocritical” in speaking out against gun violence but never admitting their contribution to the problem. Co-host Alisyn Camerota suggested Hollywood is a “powerful lobby” that “bears some responsibility for the culture of gun violence”. According to Carlson, the main question Hollywood should be asking is whether “watching violence movies” and “playing violent video games” affects children. Carlson admitted “we don’t know” whether the media desensitizes people to violence but he believes “common sense suggests maybe.”

Carlson lamented that the role of media in America’s violent culture hasn’t been examined fully. He underscored his point that the reason for this is because Hollywood makes large contributions to Democratic to Democratic candidates:

“This is something Hollywood should be taking a close look at it. There ought to be some soul-searching. There ought to be, in the words of the left, some corporate responsibility here. And yet, you do not hear members of Congress on the Democratic side suggest this because they’re taking hundreds of millions of dollars from Hollywood.”

I'm not going to defend children being allowed to watch violent movies or play violent video games, but when it comes to controlling what adults watch, I guess Tucker suddenly doesn't like that "freedom" he and his fellow wingnuts are always railing about. Sadly no one bothered to ask Carlson why people in other countries manage to watch these same movies or play these same games, and somehow they don't have the same level of gun violence that we do here in the United States.

I'd also like to know just what they think any Democrats are supposed to do about what movies Hollywood puts out there. They seem to love the 2nd Amendment, but think it's perfectly acceptable to throw out the 1st if it suits their political agenda on any given day of the week, and as long as it means protecting the gun manufacturers in America and their profits.

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From this Tuesday's The Daily Rundown on MSNBC, Chuck Todd brought in authors Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann to discuss the thesis of their new book and how the media has completely failed to cover the fact that we've got one party in this country that has gone completely off the rails and that all sides are not equal with who is at fault with our dysfunctional political system right now and in the process, managed to prove their point for them by doing the very thing they were writing about.

Egberto Willies at Addicting Info summed up the interview nicely here: Chuck Todd Argues Relevancy Of Mainstream Media With Authors, Mann and Ornstein (VIDEOS):

The mainstream press is starting to listen. Its fear of irrelevancy was evident in a nine minute segment on MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown where Chuck Todd interviewed Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein on media reaction to their book, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism and subsequent Washington Post essay, “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.”

The segment demanded a post mortem. It shows that the mainstream press is actively engaged with what is occurring in the alternate media, but seems unwilling or unable to correct their modus operandi. The introduction to the segment is fascinating. Chuck Todd relays the premise of Mann and Ornstein’s argument with a sarcastic caveat where he implies that their ostracism from the mainstream media was imagined. Their appearance on The Daily Rundown is likely the outcome of the impact the virality of their piece had on the Internet. [...]

Later in the interview Chuck Todd tries to defend the ineptitude of the mainstream media implying that balanced coverage was based on the party really believing the tenets it was espousing. [...]

His defense is a factually inaccurate characterization of how the press has been covering Republicans. One need only revisit the Healthcare debate. Much of the bill, (mandates, private insurance, etc.) was a product of the conservative think tankm “The Heritage Foundation,” yet Republicans opposed the bill on grounds they once stood for. [...]

Immediately after Ornstein talks about false equivalences, Chuck Todd shows that he still does not get why the mainstream press is held in disrepute. He immediately tries to link the past Democratic intransigence with the debt ceiling debate, with the economically damaging scenario perpetrated by the Republicans in 2011.

He just can't stop himself. More there so go read the rest. It was very frustrating to see Todd called out to his face for his terrible reporting and making the false equivalencies and watching it just fall on deaf ears and seeing him continue to do the very same thing they were talking about all throughout the interview.

And as far as Todd pretending he's doing them some big favor by finally having them on his show months and months late, and that they haven't been shunned, as Nicole pointed out back in June when Chris Hayes had them on his show, even though they were regular guests in the past, they weren't getting any phone calls for the Sunday shows shortly after they published their article.

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Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman says that Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is taking "the think out of the think tank" and turning the Heritage Foundation into a "purely political institution" by accepting a job as its president.

The tea party-backed lawmaker announced last week that he would be resigning from the Senate to head the Heritage Foundation because "the conservative movement needs strong leadership in the battle of ideas."

During a Sunday panel discussion on ABC, Republican strategist Mary Matalin sarcastically noted that her "hero," British economist John Maynard Keynes, had said that "ideas drive history, ideas drive progress and Heritage has long been the fount of so many great ideas."

"As a conservative, as a constitutionalist, that was a brilliant move -- a good move for us, a brilliant move for him," she insisted.

"The actual Keynes quote was he said, it's ideas 'which are dangerous for good or evil,'" Krugman pointed out. "I guess I've got a view in this case."

"I'm more interested in what does this do to Heritage?" the liberal economist continued. "I mean, this is somebody who has no sense that he's a researcher or an academic, anything like that. This is sort of taking the think out of the think tank, right? This is turning into a purely political institution."

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Any time someone has to use James O'Keefe and one of his phoney sting videos to validate their argument, they don't have one, which is exactly what Heritage Foundation flack Brian Darling did this Monday to justify the GOP's voter suppression laws they've been passing across the country: Heritage Foundation ‘Expert’ Cannot Cite Any Examples Of Actual Voter Fraud:

In an interview with Chuck Todd on MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown this morning, Heritage Foundation senior fellow Brian Darling argued for the importance of Florida-style voter suppression laws in order to stop potential voter fraud. But when pressed by Todd to identify any actual examples of voter fraud, Darling appeared stumped:

DARLING: And there’ve been examples of voter fraud… in Florida. Look at ACORN.

TODD: Where is this voter fraud? I mean it is not this giant…

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As Media Matters reported, Fox's John Stossell went on Fox & Friends to discuss his special Rich Man, Poor Man which aired on both of their networks, and made some dubious claims about what's happened to income growth for those who are living in poverty:

Fox Mangles Data To Claim "The Poor" Are Getting "Richer":

Fox's John Stossel claimed that it's a "myth" that "the poor are getting poorer" and that they are actually getting "richer." In fact, incomes for the bottom fifth have shown almost no growth in recent decades, and the numbers Stossel used to support his argument were cherry-picked.

Incomes At The Bottom Have Shown Almost No Growth In Decades; Stossel Calls It "Getting Richer"

Stossel: "The Rich Have Gotten Richer, But So Have The Poor." From Fox News' Fox & Friends:

STOSSEL: There are just two myths. One is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. And the truth is yes, over time the rich have gotten richer, but so have the poor -- 20 percent richer since I was in college. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 5/24/12]

CBPP: "The Era Of Shared Prosperity Ended In The 1970s." From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report:

Census family income data show that the era of shared prosperity ended in the 1970s and illustrate the divergence in income that has emerged since that time. CBO data allow us to look at what has happened to comprehensive income since 1979 -- both before and after taxes -- and offer a better view of what has happened at the top of the distribution.

As Figure 2 shows, between 1979 and 2007, average income after taxes in the top 1 percent of the distribution rose 277 percent, meaning that it nearly quadrupled. That compares with increases of about 40 percent in the middle 60 percent of the distribution and 18 percent in the bottom fifth.

The report included this graph:

[Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 3/5/12]

Media Matters has a lot more charts and information in their post along with debunking more of what Stossel said on the air.

Here's the promo for Stossel's special which you can watch the very beginning of in the clip above from Fox Business Channel where it originally aired this week: Rich Man, Poor Man:

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CNN held their "national security" debate this Tuesday night and I have to say this one was even more bizarre to watch than the last one they had that was co-hosted by the AstroTurf "tea party", not so much because of anything the candidates said since that was a lot of the same we've been hearing during the last umpteen or however many debates they already had. No, this one was bizarre because of who was asking the questions.

The debate was sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute and their fellow conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation and rather than moderator Wolf Blitzer asking all of the questions, we got treated to a host of neoconservatives questioning the candidates.

Among them were Iraq surge architect, Frederick Kagan, PNAC member and Bush era war propagandist Danielle Pletka, Mr. 'Iraq can pay for its own reconstruction' and fellow chickenhawk Paul Wolfowitz, Cheney's Cheney and torture advocate David Addington, and they wrapped things up by taking a question from his fellow torture apologist and former Bush speechwriter, Marc Thiessen.

CNN would have had a hard time coming up with a much more discredited lineup of war mongering, torture apologists to ask these candidates questions, but I guess they could have asked the Cheney's, John Yoo, John Bolton and Bill Kristol to round things out. Nothing like them giving air time to try to rehabilitate these Bush era neocons.