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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.

From The PBS Newshour, correspondent Paul Solman asked retiring Rep. Barney Frank about the intelligence of members of Congress and true to form, Barney didn't pull any punches: Barney Frank: How Smart Is Congress?:

Paul Solman: How intelligent are House members in general? I hear some people say very intelligent, other people say, nah, they don't know what they're talking about.

Barney Frank: No. I think they do. Remember, if you're in the House, you are required to talk about a whole range of things...I have found, when I'm asked by a journalist what my opinion is on something, and I say I don't know enough to have an opinion, they seem frustrated and press me to have an opinion. And I say, "why do you try to get me to tell you something when I said I don't really know enough?"

Paul Solman: I have not heard you say that very often, at least to me over the course of time.

Barney Frank: That's because you ask very specialized questions. You have a special beat in business and about which I know something. But I get the general press asking, "do you want to comment on this and comment on that?" when I haven't read about it and don't know about it. And what I have found is that, on the whole, the members of Congress are smarter than average.

Now, here's the deal. It's not been the case with people elected in 2010 and this is important. Ordinarily, to get elected to Congress, it takes a certain amount of energy and creativity. When you get one of those elections where one party wins overwhelmingly, it tends to sweep in some flotsam and jetsam. And that's been true of the Democrats and the Republicans.

Normally, though, I think very highly of the intelligence of my colleagues. I will say this: when I was in the state legislature in the '70s, I would sometimes have to stop to say, all right, I've got to explain it. Let me think about how I explain it, how do I break it down. I have never felt the need to do that in the U.S. House of Representatives.

h/t Raw Story

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Liz Cheney seems to have forgotten about a presidential daily briefing that said Osama bin Laden was determined to strike within the U.S. The daughter of the former vice president believes that military tribunals for terrorists following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing would have resulted in important intelligence that could have prevented 9/11.

"What you have is a situation, unquestionably we went through a period in the nation's history we dealt with terrorism as law enforcement matter," Cheney explained to Fox News' Chris Wallace Sunday.

"As Attorney General Mukasey pointed out when we prosecuted and convicted people after the '93 World Trade Center bombing and East Africa bombing, what it got us was 9/11 and 3,000 dead Americans."

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An intelligence review into the failed Christmas day bombing of a Northwest Airline flight bound for Detroit found "no smoking gun," according to a top counterterrorism advisor to President Barack Obama.

"There was no smoking gun," Deputy National Security Advisor told Fox News' Chris Wallace Sunday. "There was no piece of intelligence that said this guy is a terrorist and is going to get on a plane. No, none whatsoever," he said.

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Rachel runs down the list of intelligence leaks by Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the man who the Republicans feel is the best choice to be the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. This was a follow up from last night where Maddow focused on the leaking of Maj. Nidal M. Hasan's email conversations with cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi.

As Think Progress noted, Marcy Wheeler also reminded us today of some of Hoekstra's finer moments.

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Rachel Maddow doesn't back down an inch in what was really a pretty amazing interview with Tom Ridge. Amazing in that we haven't seen enough of them and how sad it was these kind of questions weren't asked of the Bush administration by anyone in the press before we invaded that country. At the end of what was a three part interview, Rachel calls Ridge out for his attempt at revisionist history.

Rachel asks him if he still believes that Iraq had WMD and Ridge says he does not. She asks him if he really doesn't believe that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld "had any role in skewing the intelligence to a foregone conclusion" and "an intelligence community error and not a politicized decision". Ridge of course says that no one in the Bush administration would have done something like that and that he believed that they just wanted to keep the country safe.

Maddow: I think that is an eloquent argument and I have to tell you….I think you making, I think you making that argument right now is why Republicans after the Bush and Cheney administration are not going to get back the country’s trust on national security. To look back at that decision and say we got it wrong but it was in good faith and not acknowledge the foregone conclusion that we were going to invade Iraq that pervaded every decision that was made about intelligence, looking back at that decision making process, it sounds like you’re making the argument you would have made the same decision again.

Americans need to believe that our government would not make that wrong a decision, would not make such a foregone, take such a foregone conclusion to such an important issue that the counter, the intelligence that proved the opposite point was all discounted, that the intelligence was combed through for any bit that would support the foregone conclusion of the policy makers. The system was broken and if you don’t see that the system was broken and you think that it was just that the Intel was wrong, I think that you’re one of the most trusted voices on national security for the Republican Party, and I think that’s the elephant in the room.

I don’t think you guys get back your credibility on national security until you realize, that was a wrong decision made by policy makers, it wasn’t the spies fault.

Ridge: Well, I think you’re suggesting that it was only being driven by quite obviously, the people who made the decision knew more about the threat than you and I do, and again I think it’s a, it’s a pretty radical conclusion to suggest the men and women entrusted with the safety of this country would predicate a decision upon any other basis than to keep America safe. Late on it may have proven that some of the information was inaccurate, but there were plenty of reasons to go into Iraq at the time, the foremost were the weapons of mass destruction. That obviously had proven to be faulty. But the fact of the matter is at that time, given what they knew, they knew more than you and I did, it seemed to be the right thing to do and the decision was made in what they considered to be the best interest of our country.

We’ve been litigating it now for about five or six years. I guess we’re going to continue to litigate it and historians and the final history hasn’t been written because of Iraq. If some form of self government, some form of democracy ultimately is achieved in Iraq and it’s not going to look exactly like ours, but you know, the Muslim world does admire freedom of speech. The Muslim world does admire democracy. As difficult as it is over there, the notion that we went in improperly will be obviously reversed and the history is yet to be written. Democracy in Iraq…

Maddow: Reversed?

Ridge: Well, yeah. Democracy in Iraq will make a huge difference not just for the men and women and the people and the families in Iraq, but for the entire region for a lot of reasons.

Maddow: If you can go back in time and sell the American people on the idea that 4000 Americans ought to lose their lives and we ought to lose those trillions of dollars for democracy in Iraq, you have a wilder imagination than I do. We were sold that war because of 9-11. We were sold that war because of the threat of weapons of mass destruction and this guy didn’t have them and our government should have known it and frankly, a lot of people believe that our government did know it and that it was a cynical decision and maybe everybody wasn’t in on it and maybe that is a radical thing to conclude...

Ridge: Well, I don’t share that point of view. I know you do. I’m not going to convince you and you’re not going to convince me, but I really appreciate the civil way we’ve had this discussion. In frankly I think it would advance our interest as a country a lot further and a lot faster if we could have the discussion such as this.

From The Onion:

In The Know panelists discuss the closing of the controversial detainee labyrinth and debate whether the Minotaur's sternum-stomping-by-hooves interrogation technique yielded valuable intelligence.

h/t C&L'er Stupid Git

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MSNBC's Joe Scarborough thinks it's a mistake to abandon President Bush's harsh interrogation techniques like waterboarding that many consider to be torture. Scarborough points to a Washington Post poll that says about half of Americans support the use of torture in some cases.

Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski notes that Obama administration officials say that intelligence can be gathered without using torture. "What Robert Gibbs is saying on 'Meet the Press' yesterday, was that they don't know whether other means may be able to get the same information," she said.

"I'm not. Go ahead. Take that chance," scoffed Scarborough. "Sometimes you have a reason to be fearful," he said. "There is irrational fear and then rational fear. If you live in a neighborhood where people's homes get broken into and people get shot and killed at night and their items get stolen, and you're fearful that may happen to you, that's not irrational. That is fear and you will support a stronger police presence in your home. If this country got attacked the way it did on September 11th, 2001, it is not irrational for Americans to fear it might happen again when you have al Qaeda wanting to do nothing but kill all of us, destroy our cities."