Heritage Foundation

Obamacare Penalty Starts Hitting Taxpayers, Nets Ignore in 91% of Stories
By Joseph Rossell | April 9, 2015 | 10:09 AM EDT

Surprise! Millions of uninsured Americans could owe Uncle Sam extra this tax season because of Obamacare. The IRS began penalizing tax filers this year if they failed to purchase insurance in 2014. Obamacare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), included an insurance mandate.

Americans must buy qualified health insurance or face the larger of two tax penalty options when they file their 2014 taxes: $95 per adult and $47.50 per child up to $285 per family, or 1 percent of income up to $9,800, according to Kaiser Health News. These penalties are also scheduled to increase dramatically in the following years.

Plenty of Praise for July Jobs Report from Networks
By Curtis Houck | August 2, 2014 | 12:35 AM EDT

Released on Friday morning, the latest jobs report from the Labor Department touted a net growth of 209,000 jobs in July. On Friday evening, the report was promoted on all three of the major broadcast networks, ranging from news briefs by ABC and NBC to a full report from CBS. While there was plenty of praise and even an ounce of positive news, the networks mostly failed to note that the economy still has a long way to go.

Over on the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley, substitute anchor James Brown provided a neutral outlook that while “[e]mployers added 209,000 jobs last month,” it was “not enough to meet demand” due to the fact that “[a]s more workers enter the job hunt, the unemployment rate ticked up to 6.2%.” His summary was followed by a report from CBS News senior business correspondent Anthony Mason in which Mason profiled a woman who recently found a job after being laid off in 2011. [MP3 audio here; Video below]

Salon: Attkisson's Not Much, But She's the Best Thing About Heritage's 'Awful' New Website
By Tom Johnson | June 5, 2014 | 11:10 PM EDT

On Wednesday, Salon's Simon Maloy suggested that the Attkisson-Heritage relationship is a match made in conservative heaven given that Attkisson's Benghazi-related resignation from CBS was an "act of career martyrdom" which made her "a candidate for canonization by right-wing pundits and activists."

"Conservatives," Maloy snarked, "love [Attkisson] for her willingness to flog Obama scandals long after they’ve been debunked and/or ceased being relevant." He added that as it stands, "the Daily Signal will have to lean heavily on whatever gravitas Attkisson provides because the rest of the site is just awful."

'Ted Cruz is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed' Declares Unusually Unhinged Thom Hartmann
By Jack Coleman | October 8, 2013 | 7:14 PM EDT

.... and the envelope please for Most Overwrought Hyperbole from Left-Wing Radio Host Rendered Deranged by Government Shutdown ... the winner is .... Thom Hartmann ... and it was the unanimous decision of our judges! (cue applause)

Alas, Hartmann will be unable to accept the award in person, seeing how the ceremony conflicted with the next round of his strictly monitored medication schedule ... (Audio after the jump).

'Heritage' Flap: Did Al Hunt Just Question IQ Of Non-Asian Immigrants?
By Mark Finkelstein | May 10, 2013 | 8:24 AM EDT

Al Hunt prefaced his remark by describing the issue of ethnicity and IQ as a "swamp".  But did he then proceed to wade right into it?

Morning Joe today took up the topic of the flap over a report on immigration produced by the Heritage Foundation. The panel's particular focus was a statement by report co-author Jason Richwine contained in his Harvard dissertation that "the average IQ of immigrants is substantially lower than that of native whites." Rather than rejecting the notion out of hand, Bloomberg's Hunt asked "is that true of Asian immigrants? Is that true of all immigrants?"  Ruh-roh! Did Al just suggest Richwine might have been on to something regarding the IQ of non-Asian immigrants?  View the video after the jump.

Obama's 2005 Daily Kos Post : Tone It Down, and Usher in a New Progressive Era
By Kerry Picket | October 30, 2008 | 7:58 PM EDT
Barack Obama sent a letter to the Daily Kos which was posted back in 2005 to talk strategy and "change" to the Kossacks. Obama was very serious about toning down the rhetoric only until it was safe enough to "enforce a more clearly progressive agenda.” (h/t to Gateway Pundit for bringing this back through Sweetness and Light) (my emphasis added:)

I thought this might be a good opportunity to offer some thoughts about not only judicial confirmations, but how to bring about meaningful change in this country.

Maybe some of you believe I could have made my general point more artfully, but it’s precisely because many of these groups are friends and supporters that I felt it necessary to speak my mind.

There is one way, over the long haul, to guarantee the appointment of judges that are sensitive to issues of social justice, and that is to win the right to appoint them by recapturing the presidency and the Senate.