Late last month, a strange file appeared on an Amazon server belonging to the Heritage Foundation, an influential Washington, D.C.-based think tank that remains widely regarded as one of the country’s most serious and respectable conservative institutions. The file—which appears to have been unintentionally uploaded by a Heritage staffer, rather than obtained by an intruder—offers a remarkable window into how Heritage maintains this reputation. It contains hundreds of emails and thousands of pages of internal fundraising reports documenting how the foundation navigated the flood of conservative conspiracy-mongering that followed Obama’s election in 2008, and how its staffers discussed the increasingly bizarre ideologies of its donor class with puzzlement and occasional derision.

A few months ago, investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson resigned from CBS News, citing her network’s alleged fear of crossing the Obama administration. Today Attkisson reappeared on The Daily Signal, a news website bankrolled by The Heritage Foundation—a powerful conservative think tank—with a story about a government-funded research trial that may have harmed premature infants...during the George W. Bush administration.

Bloomberg Businessweek reported today that the Heritage Foundation plans to launch a "new digital news site" called the Daily Signal next month, as an answer to Vox and FiveThirtyEight. I almost wrote that Heritage planned to "get into the news business," but that would have been inaccurate:

Jason Richwine, whose immigration-policy analysis for the Heritage Foundation was informed by his earlier writings on the congenital intellectual weakness of Hispanic immigrants, has resigned. Noted race scholars Charles Murray and Michelle Malkin are outraged by the betrayal.

If you're one of those Democrats who's been riding a huge schadenfreude high since November 6, you probably took news of South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint's retirement in the customary way. With the online equivalent of going "WHOOOOOOOO" out of a limousine's sunroof, after doing a shooter with one of those awesome names like "Sex Intercourse with Boobs Outside."

Barack Obama's Big Government is soliciting propaganda videos from Americans to help him explain how rules are made and how everyday people can help him destroy White Culture and free enterprise. The Heritage Foundation made a wacky one.

[There's nothing to hide the flaws in an extreme closeup of senator John McCain taken during an address to the Heritage Foundation in Washington. Image via Getty]