First, farmers saw the immediate economic catastrophe in Alabama because of the state’s draconian immigration law HB 56 as immigrant workers fled and their crops rotted. Then two high-profile arrests of foreign autoworkers legally in the state potentially put international investment in Alabama at risk. As a result, business leaders are now joining the chorus of voices against HB 56 because of serious economic consequences the anti-immigrant law is having on the state — while the state’s governor is playing damage control with the four foreign automakers that employ tens of thousands of Alabamians:

Gov. Robert Bentley, who signed the law, said he’s contacting foreign executives to tell them they and their companies are still welcome in Alabama.

“We are not anti-foreign companies. We are very pro-foreign companies,” he said.

And earlier this week, the business alliance in Birmingham, Alabama’s largest city, called for revisions to the law because the group worried the law was tainting Alabama’s image around the world. James T. McManus, chairman of the Alliance and CEO of the Energen Corp., said revisions “are needed to ensure that momentum remains strong in our competitive economic development efforts.”

Sheldon Day, the mayor of Thomasville, Alabama, has already seen the reality of McManus’ concerns. After Day recruited a Canadian steel company to Thomasville in July 2010, he said 25 companies have visited the town about building plants there. But he told the Wall Street Journal that since the law went into effect, at least one company turned down a visit because of the immigration law. And Golden Dragon Precise Copper Tube Group, a Chinese company that in March pledged to build a $100 million factory in Thomasville, is reconsidering its decision to build a plant in Alabama after the law went into effect.

The mounting concerns among business leaders show a turning point for the immigration law. Already, legislators have weighed in about wanting to change HB 56, and state Attorney General Luther Strange admitted that parts of the harmful law need to be scrapped. For a law that could cost the Alabama economy at least $40 million each year, it should be clear how vital it is for lawmakers in Alabama to do something about the crisis HB 56 created.

State Rep. Bob Nicholas (R-Cheyenne)

Nicholas, 54, was arrested in Boca Grande, Fla., while on vacation after allegedly punching and kicking his 19-year-old mentally disabled son, according to a Lee County Sheriff’s Office report. The document indicates that multiple witnesses outside of a restaurant saw Nicholas hit his son repeatedly with a closed fist, push him onto the sidewalk and then kick him more than five times.

The Lee County Sheriff’s Office contacted Nicholas about two hours after the incident in the hotel room where he and his son were staying. A sergeant reported a small blood stain on a bedspread in the room and observed that the victim had redness and welts on his neck and a foot-sized abrasion to the skin around his left ribcage that appeared to have a shoelace pattern to it, the report says. Nicholas was placed under arrest and transported to the Lee County Jail without incident. He was released Nov. 24 on a $20,000 bond.

Nicholas explained his behavior by saying his son, who has a condition similar to autism, was being combative during lunch, and that he needed “corporal punishment.” He has no intentions of resigning. “I don’t think I committed a crime, so why would I?” he said.

The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board provoked an enormous backlash by airing ads that tell women who are date-raped that they have only themselves and their friends to blame. The ad was part of a $600,000 campaign aimed at curbing excessive drinking.

After hearing from hundreds of rape victims that the ads were extremely upsetting, even traumatizing, the board has decided to pull them:

The ads send the message that women are not only at fault for getting themselves raped—a societal bias reflected in and re-enforced by too many court decisions—it’s your fault if your friend gets raped, too.

Last night, after receiving hundreds of phone calls and hundreds of email complaints, the PLCB has yanked the ads.

“We feel very strong, and still do, that when we entered the initial discussion about doing a campaign like this it was important to bring the most difficult conversations about over-consumption of alcohol to the forefront and all of the dangers associated with it—date rape being one of these things,” says PLCB spokesperson Stacey Witalec.

“That being said, due to the number of concerns that we heard about that specific ad, and the victims especially that we heard from talking about how the image … made them feel victimized all over again, we felt it was prudent to pull it.”

The board undoubtedly had good intentions when they launched their campaign, but there are better ways to go about it. As Jezebel pointed out, “Shock tactics aren’t necessary to increase awareness of the possibility of rape. We know what can happen after a night of drinking.”

And their blame-the-victim message reinforced the difficulty prosecuting rapists in the state. It’s easier to get away with sexual assault in Pennsylvania than anywhere else in the country because it’s the only state that doesn’t allow expert testimony in rape cases. Because experts aren’t allowed to educate jurors about the behaviors of sexual assault victims and assailants, “jurors are left making judgments based on the biases perpetuated in the PLCB ad.”

“We’ve had several cases where juries have acquitted serial rapists because they felt the victims’ behavior after the assault was counterintuitive,” says Deborah Harley, chief of the Family Violence and Sexual Assault Unit of the District Attorney’s Office.

At a campaign stop in Spencer, Iowa on Wednesday, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) join the game of one-upsmanship his fellow GOP presidential contenders have been playing for weeks to see who can come up with the most draconian immigration proposal. According to Santorum, the solution to America’s immigration problem is more broken families:

When asked how to handle someone who is brought to the country illegally by their parents, Santorum said they continue to break the law by having fake documentation and also accused fellow presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich of having “false compassion.”

“You can’t be here for 20 years and commit only one illegal act … because everything you’re doing while you’re here is against the law …” Santorum said. “I understand Congressman Gingrich saying, ‘Well, you know, people have been here and they’ve been good citizens and paying taxes.’ Yeah, under somebody else’s Social Security number because you stole it.”

Families should be broken up when the law is broken, which includes illegal immigration, he added.

Santorum’s new broken families proposal is the mirror image of a proposal he offered last week. Then, he said on Fox News that he “doesn’t want to break up families.” And he would be OK with the family being deported together because he added, “we’re not sending them to any kind of difficult country.”

Setting aside the heartlessness of Santorum’s broken families policy, it’s also a horrible waste of money. Thousands of immigrant children already languish in the U.S. foster care system after their parents were deported. And it would be enormously costly for the nation to deport everyone who is in the nation illegally — as Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry have suggested — on top of the strains it would put on the foster care system. Deporting every undocumented immigrant in the country would cost a massive $285 billion over five years.