Free Republic

As is often the case with my brain, I need to mull over things sometimes to decide what I think about them. Such is the case with Jason Richwine, the Heritage Foundation scholar who was driven out when it was discovered that his thesis (which passed inspection at Harvard) reached the following conclusions: So what is actually in the dissertation? The dissertation shows that recent immigrants score lower than U.S.-born whites on many different types of IQ tests. Using statistical analysis, it suggests that the test-score differential is due primarily to a real cognitive gap rather than to culture or...

Two radically different theories are raging across the conservative movement about amnesty for illegal aliens and its effect on our economy. How could the same movement grounded on the same conceptual principles come to two totally different conclusions? I was honored to interview Derrick Morgan, Vice President of the Heritage Foundation, on May 8 as a co-host of the Conservative Commandos radio show. I asked Derrick Morgan these questions, and the Heritage vice president made the entire issue crystal-clear. So, would immigration reform under the "Gang of Eight's" proposal cause our economy to expand, increase wages for everyone, and more...

Former Sen. Jim DeMint (R – S.C.) is standing by the controversial Heritage Foundation study that put a $6.3 trillion price tag on the Senate immigration bill, saying: “There’s no doubt that these numbers are real.”

I have worked on the issue of immigration’s fiscal impact for a long time, having presented my first academic paper on the subject at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association almost two decades ago. I can thus say with confidence that the Heritage Foundation’s recent report on the fiscal cost of illegal immigrants is the most detailed and exhaustive ever done on this topic. The report’s lead author is Robert Rector, intellectual godfather of welfare reform. Rector finds that illegal-immigrant households use about $55 billion more in services than they pay in taxes each year. Under the...

As you no doubt have already heard, on Friday the Heritage Foundation accepted the resignation of one Jason Richwine, who in 2009 had completed a Harvard dissertation in which he probed the nexus between immigration and IQ. The decision revealed a shocking unwillingness on the part of Heritage to stand up to bullying and protect the academic freedom of its researchers. Perhaps the only good thing to emerge from all this has been the wide-scale distribution of the dissertation itself, a worthy if highly debatable document. It’s a pity that none of Richwine’s detractors seem to have seriously engaged the...

American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray suggested on Friday that former Heritage Foundation analyst Jason Richwine, whose doctoral dissertation at Harvard included evidence that Hispanic immigrants have lower IQs than non-Hispanic whites, had been railroaded and forced to resign by people without integrity or “balls.” Quote: Jason Richwine, guilty of crimethink, "resigns." The bashing from the right has been as mindless as from the left. Thank God I was working for Chris DeMuth and AEI, not Jim DeMint and Heritage, when The Bell Curve was published. Integrity. Loyalty. Balls.DeMuth was the president of AEI from 1986 to 2008. The Bell...

A co-author of a disputed Heritage Foundation report on a new immigration bill has resigned amid controversy over claims he made about immigrants having low IQs. A spokesman for the conservative think tank confirmed Jason Richwine's resignation Friday without offering details. Richwine was one of two authors of a report released Monday that said immigration legislation pending in the Senate would cost $6.3 trillion over 50 years as immigrants consumed federal benefits without making up for it in taxes. The report quickly came under attack as critics from the left and right said it didn't account for economic benefits from...

The immigration debate has taken a sudden and nasty turn with the publication of a new report by The Heritage Foundation claiming that reform legislation will end up costing American taxpayers $6.3 trillion. The Heritage Foundation, one of the most respected conservative organizations in the U.S., has sullied its reputation by lending its name to this tendentious piece of propaganda. First, the study grossly exaggerates the "cost" of immigration reform by assuming that all of those who gain legal status will claim welfare and other social service benefits as soon as they become eligible. While it is true that Hispanic...

The Heritage Foundation made something of a splash with its study suggesting that immigration reform will cost the public trillions. Past work by one of its co-authors helps put that piece in context. Jason Richwine is relatively new to the think tank world. He received his PhD in public policy from Harvard in 2009, and joined Heritage after a brief stay at the American Enterprise Institute. Richwine’s doctoral dissertation is titled “IQ and Immigration Policy”; the contents are well summarized in the dissertation abstract: "The statistical construct known as IQ can reliably estimate general mental ability, or intelligence. The average...

America's financial future? Destroyed by mass amnesty for 20+ million illegal aliens. Mexico's Oligarchs say "Gracias, Gringo!"- by John HillStand With ArizonaThe widely-anticipated Heritage Foundation estimate on the cost of the 'Gang of Eight' illegal alien amnesty bill was released this morning, and it is a unmitigated disaster. The 'comprehensive immigration' overhaul being taken up in the Senate this week would add at least $6.3 trillion to the national debt if 11 million illegal aliens are granted legal status, according to the conservative think tank. And that amount assumes the low-ball figure of "11 million" - which most serious experts say...

Amnesty, and particularly citizenship, for people who broke the law to get here is bad policy because it rewards law breakers and advantages them over law abiders. It’s also very costly, as a study released by the Heritage Foundation demonstrates, The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer: Executive Summary Unlawful immigration and amnesty for current unlawful immigrants can pose large fiscal costs for U.S. taxpayers. Government provides four types of benefits and services that are relevant to this issue: Direct benefits. These include Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, and workers’ compensation. Means-tested welfare benefits. There...

Did you know Black Confederate soldiers are buried on the grounds of Atlanta’s Morehouse College, a 4 year historically Black college, located on the highest ground where the Battle of Atlanta was fought?

UN Watch, an independent Geneva-based monitoring group, has sent a letter to UNESCO, calling on the international body to take immediate action to stop Hamas from bulldozing of a 3000-year-old Gaza harbor for use as a terrorist training camp. The partial destruction of the ancient Anthedon Harbor—which includes the ruins of a Roman temple and archaeological remains from the Persian, Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine eras—follows its nomination as a World Heritage site.

Grover Norquist, champion of Islamism infiltration, is working to advance the cause of tax reform by backing an illegal alien amnesty that will impose a whopping economic burden on the country… leading to higher taxes. The contradiction is obvious. If you’re going to legalize 12 million undocumented Democrats plus all their family members then you are tremendously boosting the welfare state on the receiving end and the voting end. The only way that the pro-amnesty side can win the amnesty debate is by not having it. And that means going after any sources of facts and taking them down. The...

YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — The U.S. government faces a $1.4 million fine for damage caused to a Philippines national park when the minesweeper USS Guardian ran aground on a coral reef in January, Philippine officials said Monday. The fine total, converted from 58.4 million Philippine pesos, is based on a 2009 law detailing fines based on total area damaged, unauthorized entry and other violations. A statement from Tubbataha Reefs National Park superintendent Angelique Songco called the fine just a “slap on the wrist.” “However, we respect the rule of law, and this is the fine stipulated,” Songco said in...

YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan -- The commanding officer of the former minesweeper USS Guardian and three others have been relieved of duty following the initial investigation into the grounding of the Sasebo-based ship on a reef in the Philippines, Navy officials said Thursday. Lt. Cmdr. Mark Rice, executive officer Daniel Tyler, the ship’s enlisted assistant navigator and the officer of the deck at the time of the ship’s grounding were all relieved because they “did not adhere to the standard navy navigation procedures,” Expeditionary Strike Group Seven spokesman Lt. Brian Wierzbicki said. Rice and the others were relieved by Rear...

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) — Four officers of a U.S. Navy minesweeper that ran aground on coral reef in the Philippines are being relieved of their duties. The U.S. Pacific Fleet said in a statement Wednesday that initial findings indicate all four sailors failed to adhere to standard navigation procedures at the time of the Jan. 17 grounding of the Guardian. The sailors are the commanding officer, the executive officer and navigator, the assistant navigator and the officer of the deck. They've been reassigned. snip

Jewish? Not, but know a Jew? Please watch and PLEASE SHARE this very warm, uplifting 5-minute presentation that includes musical accompaniment (and translation). It's about the authentic -- and eternal -- message of Passover. Any Jew and, for that matter, believing Christian will be thankful that you did. GUARANTEED!WE CAN MAKE THIS GO VIRAL! It deserves to!

Jim DeMint is retiring from the United States Senate and will take over the Heritage foundation. Heritage is certainly getting one of the conservative superstars of this current era. But what will this mean for the Senate and the future?

Elizabeth Warren on defensive again over heritage claimBy Hillary Chabot Monday, September 24, 2012 - Updated 2 hours ago **SNIP** Warren, during the Jim & Margery show on 96.9 WTKK this morning, addressed the issue when a caller asked her if she felt bad for checking the box in the law school directory and potentially taking an opportunity from a real Native American. “I know what I know from my family. I didn’t check a box to go to college. I didn’t check a box to go to law school. The only box I checked was in a directory to...

This post comes to you from the burning hell of a poolside in Puglia, Italy. If you want a better idea of the kind of ordeal I am currently experiencing, just check out this site. (And it doesn't do it justice, either. Seriously, I think Borgo Egnazia may be the most perfect resort hotel I've ever stayed at. If you can scrape together enough bucks make it your life mission to come here....) But enough of my glamorous life. I wanted to talk - once more - about the Queen's Diamond Jubilee since I think it's jolly important that not...

ROCKINGHAM, N.C. — When Trey Gainey drove his pickup truck to school Monday morning, he didn’t expect to be met in the parking lot by school officials telling him to remove a Confederate flag flying from his antenna. The Richmond Senior High School junior said he flies the flag every weekend, and decided to leave the flag on his truck on his last day of classes before finals start. Gainey has a belt buckle that says “Redneck” and a horn that plays “Dixie,” so there is no mistaking how the teen identifies himself. “It’s just my Southern heritage, you know....

Warren demands an apology from opponent in heritage controversyBy Justin Sink - 05/31/12 02:55 PM ET Elizabeth Warren demanded an apology from Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) Thursday after she said the lawmaker suggested she should not have taken her parent's claims of Native American ancestry at face value. At a campaign stop in Springfield, Mass., Thursday, Brown urged Warren "to tell the truth and answer the questions you guys are asking." "My mom and dad have told me a lot of things too, but it’s not accurate. You know, you have to, especially in these type of things, when you’re...

House Dem: Warren response on heritage 'like water torture'By Cameron Joseph - 05/31/12 06:05 PM ET Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren (D) has badly botched questions surrounding her Native American heritage and the issue is damaging her campaign, Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) told The Hill. "There has to be an answer for this at some point, something that's full and comprehensive and has some closure to it as opposed to the way it's been dragged out — like water torture," Lynch said late Thursday afternoon. Asked if Warren and her campaign should put out all the information to put the...

Elizabeth Warren fumbled through her worst stretch as a Senate candidate this week, setting off a debate among strategists over whether the controversy over her claims to Native American ancestry would linger when the November election is closer. The Warren campaign will not say when top advisers learned that she considered herself part-Native American, but it was an element of her biography that seemed to catch them off guard. When news emerged last Friday that Harvard Law School had publicly touted Warren as a Native American professor in the Harvard Crimson in the 1990s, Warren advisers saw it as a...

That's the name I'm going to use referencing her. Supposedly has a great-grandmother who was a native american. Seriously? when all her immediate closer family names are as anglo-saxon as when white met bread. Geez, what a stretch. Wonder if she's related to that Colorado prof who claimed to be native american too. This is why "Premise Running Thin" fits her spirit and personality perfectly.

BOTTINEAU It wouldn't be surprising if Jonathan Bartlett bleeds red, white and blue. The Bottineau resident has a deepening appreciation for this nation's founding fathers and early citizens and citizen soldiers. A few years ago, Bartlett was introduced to Project Appleseed, a combination heritage and marksmanship program conducted by the Revolutionary War Veterans Association. He was so captured by the experience that he continues to rise through the ranks of RWVA. "It was inspiring. It motivated me to be involved," said Bartlett. "Something really connected with the shooting aspect and the history of our founding. Our founders inspired our free...

..A new genealogical analysis of four Republican presidential candidates by the web site Ancestry.com finds that Perry is a first cousin (six times removed) of Sam Houston, the commander-in-chief of Texas revolutionary forces and twice-elected president of the Republic of Texas. “Texans have that Texas pride,” said Anastasia Harman, lead family historian for Ancestry.com. “That Texas pride is obviously in his blood.” Houston, Texas’ seventh governor, and Perry, the state’s 47th governor, are both related to Captain John Paxton, a hero of the U.S. Revolutionary War who survived the infamous winter encampment at Valley Forge with General George Washington. Paxton’s...

Gingrich: Health Insurance Mandate 'Started As Conservative Effort to Stop Hillarycare' By Terence P. Jeffrey December 11, 2011 (CNSNews.com) - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Saturday defended his previous support of a federal mandate requiring people to buy health insurance by saying that "virtually every conservative saw the mandate as a less dangerous future" than the health-care plan being advanced by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton in 1993 and that the idea of mandating that people buy health insurance "started as a conservative effort to stop Hillarycare in the 1990s." As recently as this May, Gingrich defended what he called...

Israel government scores own goal with US Jewish organisations The Israeli government is facing an unusual backlash from major US Jewish organisations after launching an advertising campaign essentially urging Israeli expats not to marry clueless American Jews or raise their children in the United States. 2:03PM GMT 03 Dec 2011 The first ad shows a young Israeli woman wincing after her boyfriend mistakes candles and music marking Yom HaZikaron, Israel's memorial day, for a romantic night in. The words "They will always remain Israelis. Their partners won't always understand what that means. Help them return to Israel" are read by...

Giving amnesty to illegal immigrants will greatly increase long-term costs to the taxpayer. Granting amnesty to illegal immigrants would, over time, increase their use of means-tested welfare, Social Security, and Medicare. Fiscal costs would rise in the intermediate term and increase dramatically when amnesty recipients reach retirement. Although it is difficult to provide a precise estimate, it seems likely that if 10 million adult illegal immigrants currently in the U.S. were granted amnesty, the net retirement cost to government (benefits minus taxes) could be over $2.6 trillion.

As ever with enviro-scholars, Professor Markham knoweth not what he hath wrought. Highlights: Germany is driving the Climate Change campaign. Many major international enviro-organizations (Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Birdlife International, etc.) are controlled by their German chapters. Several militant leaders of Germany’s confrontational early-1980s environmentalist protests were, a decade later, running government ministries. While Germany’s big enviro-organizations masquerade as citizens’ crusades, they are in fact top-down bureaucracies full of cynical well-paid careerists who work in tandem with state and corporate elites. Only 40 (forty) persons within Greenpeace-Germany’s half million members may vote for the board of directors. WWF-Germany has...

We’ve made a bit of a mistake as a conservative movement fixating so much on the race for the White House. There’s a behind the scenes fight happening in Washington right now. Congressional Republicans are not just selling us out, they are hell bent — and I really do mean hell bent — on destroying the conservative groups raising red flags about what they are doing.For so long the GOP in Washington could hide behind surveys like the American Conservative Union survey, which shows just how much more someone is Republican than Democrat. No one actually did a survey that...

This week, JD Foster and Curtis Dubay from the Heritage Foundation wrote an article arguing that repatriation was a bad idea right now. ATR disagrees with this (and this seems to be a departure from prior Heritage Foundation policy on this, as well). Below are our reasons why: What Is Repatriation? Under U.S. tax law, a company that earns a profit overseas must, in general, pay income tax to the overseas government AND to the IRS if they bring the remaining profit back to the U.S. The company gets a credit for the foreign income tax paid, but the difference...

This week, Heritage is releasing a first-of-its-kind television ad that will air on Fox News, Fox Business, and other networks. Featured in the ad are Heritage Trustee Steve Forbes and leading Heritage policy expert James Carafano. Have you seen it yet? With a potential audience of more than 1,000,000 people, Heritage now reaches conservatives in a brand-new way--rallying them together to call on Congress and the White House to cut government spending, stop the liberal assault on our values, and protect our Constitution. I’m calling on you as a fellow conservative to help us raise the funds needed to cover...

If conservatives believe that reducing the burden of government creates economic growth, lefties at the Daily Kos have to believe the opposite: cutting government is an economic disaster. Take the Thursday blog post by Vyan titled "Cutting our way toward 3rd World status." The target is the Heritage Foundation, which apparently wants America to be a "third world nation with no middle class," like Somalia, because of the "(Koch Funded) Heritage Idea that the U.S. should change it's constitution to require it to only spend a maximum of 18% of it's GDP and require a Super-Majority Vote to increase

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley isn't retreating from her decision to keep the Confederate flag atop the north end of the Statehouse in Columbia despite complaints from the NAACP, whose president this week said the ethnic minority governor is a "contradiction" for allowing the flag to fly. Speaking to a crowd at an NAACP national conference in Los Angeles on Monday, NAACP President Benjamin Jealous attempted to shame Haley into removing the flag by comparing African American slavery to oppression Haley's ancestors in India faced under British rule. "Perhaps one of the most perplexing examples of the contradictions of this...

Next time you're about to slam somebody for carrying on like a Neanderthal, think twice: You might be hitting close to home. A new study published in the Molecular Biology and Evolution reports that people of non-African heritage carry a chromosome which originates from Neanderthals, offering evidence that the two populations interbred at a certain point in history.

Oakland A’s ready for their first Jewish heritage gameby andy altman-ohr Thursday, May 12, 2011 Once known for their outrageous promotional stunts — such as Hot Pants Day, Mustache Day and Dinger Night — the Oakland A’s have decided to host an event that’s much more commonplace, at least these days: Jewish Heritage Night. Already a standby on the schedules of many teams across the country, Jewish Heritage Night with the A’s will make its debut Tuesday, May 17 in a game against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. First pitch at the newly renamed Overstock.com Coliseum in Oakland is...

On March 23rd we went to the Atlas Shrugged movie premiere at the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC. Afterward we were able to catch up with producer Harmon Kaslow and several people who attended the premiere. Here is what they had to say about the movie.

Back in the Jurassic Era when I was young, we learned “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” in school, and I often heard it on the radio on national holidays. We learned two verses, the first and the fifth. The words of the fifth verse made a deep impression on me: As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free. It implanted in my youthful mind the idea that fighting for freedom sometimes requires actually FIGHTING for freedom, which includes the possibility of dying for freedom. But now, I rarely hear this inspiring hymn on...

Last week, House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) outlined $58 billion in non-security domestic spending cuts. Within hours, Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) attacked the proposal calling it “unworkable” and “even more draconian than we originally anticipated.” But these outcries were hardly unexpected considering Washington’s spending addiction. As National Review’s Rich Lowry commented in his column this morning, “There is a complicated mathematical symbol practically unknown to the House Appropriations Committee. It’s called the minus sign.” In response to these outcries, Matthias Shapiro, the creator of Obama Budget Cuts Visualization and The National Debt Road Trip videos, has created another new video which...

From Bartleby's:    Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations.  1989.     NUMBER: 71 AUTHOR: Dean Alfange (1900–  ) QUOTATION: I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon—if I can. I seek opportunity—not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the...

Economic freedom is the fundamental right of every human to control his or her own labor and property. In an economically free society, individuals are free to work, produce, consume, and invest in any way they please, with that freedom both protected by the state and unconstrained by the state. Index of Economic Freedom World Rankings World Rank Country Index Year Overall Score Change from Previous Business Freedom Trade Freedom Fiscal Freedom Government Size Monetary Freedom Investment Freedom Financial Freedom Property Rights Freedom From Corruption Labor Freedom 1 Hong Kong 2011 89.7 0 98.7 90 93.3 89.6 87.1 90...

WASHINGTON – Two more big guns of the conservative movement confirmed today they are not participating in the Conservative Political Action Conference next month because of the continued participation of the homosexual activist organization GOProud. The Heritage Foundation, the largest think tank in Washington and not known as part of the religious right, confirmed that it is not taking part in what has been the largest annual gathering of conservatives in the country. Heritage has been an active participant in CPAC every year for the last 10. "We have withdrawn," said Mike Gonzalez, vice president of communications for the Heritage...

I enjoy making up politically correct versions of Christmas carols. But today many young people are unfamiliar with the carols we knew so well. This year I listened to radio and watched TV in the weeks before Christmas. Unless I tuned to a religious station, carols were few and far between. Even mall music included fewer carols than in the past. My favorite carol is “Good King Wenceslas.” It expresses the essence of religion: not dogma but treating our fellow humans with kindness. But I haven’t heard it on TV or radio for years. Kids used to grow up hearing...

PARIS (Reuters) – Peking Opera, Spanish Flamenco and the art of French gastronomy won places Tuesday on UNESCO's list of intangible world heritages to preserve. The U.N. culture and education agency deemed the traditions and 43 others from a total of 11 countries worthy of recognition on the list at a meeting in Nairobi. Among the more obscure traditions, Luxembourg won recognition for a centuries-old annual hopping procession in the eastern border village of Echternach. The blade-twirling of a scissor-dancing ritual in Peru's Chanka region, which has roots going back to the 16th century, was also nominated as was Turkey's...

Ah yes, Michael Bennet’s senate campaign is banking, politically, on the fact that most Coloradans don’t know their own history. Bennet pounced on a separation-of-church-and-state speech given in 2009 by Ken Buck...Buck, like Delaware campaign cutie and senate hopeful, Christine O’Donnell, knows that the phrase “separation of church and state” appears nowhere in any of our founding documents. They both note that the “separation” ruse has been used, to our detriment, to expunge religious ethics from American culture.

First there was the Contract With America. Then came the Pledge to America. The Heritage Foundation plans to issue its Solutions for America blueprint on Monday–just after Republicans issued their Pledge to America, which outlined what they’ll do if they win back power in the November elections. “Now is the time to be bold, and to act as befits our character,” foundation President Edwin J. Feulner writes in a letter addressed to “My fellow conservatives.” “That is what our parents and grandparents would expect of us, what future generations demand – and what The Heritage Foundation offers to America.” Feulner...

Clint Howard, long-time character actor and brother of the more liberal director Ron Howard, is displaying his conservative stripes in a new advertisement for Heritage Action for American, the new grassroots advocacy arm of The Heritage Foundation. The video calls attention to the propensity of politicians with unpopular voting records to avoid townhall meetings. The video, titled “August Recess Excuses,” aims to raise awareness about the disconnect between the issues that concern congressional leaders and those that concern their constituents. “The ‘August Recess Excuses’ video highlights the lengths our so-called representatives will go to avoid their constituents,” Heritage Action’s CEO...