Late last week at a campaign stop in South Carolina, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) revived a debunked conservative talking point about so-called “anchor babies” — a derogatory term for the American-born children of undocumented immigrants who are full citizens under the 14th Amendment.

But Bachmann, who professes to revere the Constitution, suggested that these American citizens with foreign parents are somehow here “illegally” and that the “anchor baby” problem should be dealt with through legislation:

Bachmann, who was also asked about her position on illegal immigration, told the audience she thinks it is possible through legislation to stop the “anchor baby” problem of children born to mothers living illegally in the United States. When that happens she said, “A whole new set of implications arise for the United States. I do not believe that the American taxpayer should be paying benefits to people who are in the United States illegally.”

Presumably the legislative remedy Bachmann is referring to is the Birthright Citizenship Act, an unconstitutional bill that Bachmann co-sponsored in the previous Congress. The 14th Amendment provides that “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States . . . are citizens of the United States,” with a narrow exception for children of ambassadors and other people who aren’t subject to U.S. law. Bachmann’s bill openly defies this constitutional guarantee by declaring that the children of undocumented immigrants no longer enjoy birthright citizenship.

Additionally, there is, in fact, no “anchor baby” problem. The term reflects conservative paranoia that women come from different countries and intentionally give birth in the United States to try to “anchor” themselves in this country. As Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) once put it, “People come here to have babies. They come here to drop a child. It’s called ‘drop and leave.’”

As many experts have pointed out, this is a baseless and senseless concern — only 9 percent of undocumented immigrants had children shortly after arriving, and undocumented parents with American children have no easier path to citizenship and are still subject to forced deportation. That’s a pretty flimsy anchor.

Nevertheless, conservatives are going to extraordinary lengths to punish undocumented immigrants through harsh legislation. Bachmann appeared at the event with South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) and Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC), two conservatives who the Washington Post points out have been able to use their own race as a cover to go after immigrants while avoiding accusations of racism.

In a speech yesterday at Southern Methodist University law school, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg offered a grim assessment of the judicial confirmations process. If she were nominated to the Supreme Court today, her background as a civil rights attorney would likely prevent her from being confirmed:

Ginsburg said that to practice for her Senate confirmation hearings, White House staffers in mock hearings grilled her on her work for the ACLU. During those mock hearings she told them: “There’s nothing you can do to get me to bad mouth the ACLU.”

Such grilling, though, did not happen, she said. She was confirmed 96-3.

“Today, my ACLU connection would probably disqualify me,” she said.

It’s worth noting exactly what kind of work Justice Ginsburg did for the ACLU before she was confirmed to the federal bench. As director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, Ginsburg was literally the single most important women’s rights attorney in American history. She authored the brief in Reed v. Reed that convinced a unanimous Supreme Court to hold for the very first time that the Constitution’s guarantee of Equal Protection applies to women. And her brief in Craig v. Boren convinced the Court to hand down its very first decision holding that gender discrimination laws are subject to heightened constitutional scrutiny. It is possible that modern doctrines preventing gender discrimination would simply not exist if Ruth Bader Ginsburg hadn’t done the work she did for the ACLU.

And yet, in today’s era of rampant right-wing filibusters, that alone would disqualify her for a seat on the federal bench.

Taxpayers for Justice, an organization of death penalty opponents, is in the process of introducing and collecting signatures for a ballot initiative that would abolish the state’s death penalty, which has crunched the state’s budget while failing to actually carry out executions. The initiative, known as the Safe California Act, would convert existing death row inmates to Life Without Parole (LWOP) sentences and, if approved, will appear on the 2012 ballot.

The initiative is based on studies that have proven California’s existing death penalty law ineffective and overly costly, as the largest and most expensive death row in the country has cost the state $4 billion while only executing 13 inmates since 1978. More death row inmates have died from natural causes than have been executed in California, where the last execution took place six years ago. Converting existing death sentences to LWOP would save the state $184 million each year, according to a study released in June.

Taxpayers for Justice spokesperson James Clark told ThinkProgress that money saved from ending the death penalty could be redirected to local law enforcement efforts to solve murder and rape cases, more than half of which he said remain unsolved:

Everyone agrees the system as it stands is non-functional since no one is being executed, and any attempt to make it functional will put California’s budget further in the hole, so the only solution is to replace the death penalty completely. [...] California is wasting billions on just a select few murderers while nearly half of all murders are unsolved — and more than half of all rapes are unsolved. Ending the death penalty and diverting those resources to local law enforcement is a smart and necessary public safety measure.

As ThinkProgress reported in March, California’s most prolific death penalty judge agrees with the coalition. Former Superior Court Judge Donald McCartin, who earned the nickname “the hanging judge” for the numerous death sentences he issued, wrote an editorial in the Los Angeles Times calling on the state to abolish the death penalty to help close its $25 billion budget gap.

Earlier this year, California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) vetoed the construction of a new $356 million death row facility at San Quentin State Prison.

Once the initiative is filed, the coalition will need to collect roughly 750,000 signatures to get it approved and placed on the November 2012 ballot, an effort Clark said he expects will succeed with ease. As for the measure’s success, the group is banking on a combination of recent polling showing Californians growing increasingly opposed to the death penalty and high voter turnout among women and racial minorities, two groups more likely to oppose to the death penalty, due to the presidential election.