Despite the harm caused by a harsh immigration law in the neighboring state of Alabama, Mississippi State Rep. Becky Currie (R) filed a bill, HB 488, that would implement an Alabama-style law in Mississippi. Unlike anti-immigrant laws in states like Georgia and Arizona, Currie’s bill includes Alabama’s unconstitutional provisions driving the children of immigrants out of schools and potentially making it a felony for undocumented immigrants to take a shower.

Significantly, Currie is a member of the organization State Legislators for Legal Immigration (SLLI), an anti-immigrant group of 65 lawmakers whose members “have promoted conspiracy theories about supposed government concentration camps and a coming one-world government, as well as false claims that President Obama is a foreigner and a Muslim.” SLLI also touts its “working partnership” with the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), an anti-immigrant group designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. FAIR, whose attorneys include Romney immigration advisor Kris Kobach, draft much of the legislation pushed by SLLI members.

Like Alabama’s law, Currie’s bill would require schools to check a newly enrolled student’s citizenship or legal resident status, according to the bill:

“Every public elementary and secondary school in this state…shall determine whether the student enrolling in public school was born outside the jurisdiction of the United States or is the child of an alien not lawfully present in the United States.”

When Alabama schools began enforcing the same policy, students with immigrant parents were terrified. Many stayed home, and more left Alabama schools permanently as their families fled the state. The Justice Department even stepped in to ensure that the law was not stopping students’ right to an education. Students in Mississippi could face the same fear under the proposed law.

HB 488 would also prevent an undocumented immigration from entering “into or attempt to enter into a business transaction with the state or a political subdivision of the state.” This provision is open-ended, “including, but not limited to, applying for or renewing a motor vehicle license plate, applying for or renewing a driver’s license or nondriver identification card, or applying for or renewing a business license.” A similar provision in Alabama was interpreted so broadly that public utility companies refused service to anyone who could not prove they are a legal resident or citizen. Under this interpretation, it became a felony for an undocumented immigrant to simply have water at his home to take a bath.

Alabama should serve as a prime example to Mississippi of the harm that can come from extreme immigration policies designed to do little more than make the lives of undocumented immigrants impossible in that state. But it is unlikely that legislators who agree with Currie will listen.

Yesterday, the Virginia House of Delegates passed a so-called “Personhood” bill which purports to give fertilized eggs the same legal rights as actual human beings. As ThinkProgress has previously explained, these bills could outlaw many forms of birth control, and they also attempt to ban abortion even when a woman is raped.

This is hardly the only example of this Personhood bill’s chief sponsor, Del. Bob Marshall (R-VA) showing disregard for women who have been sexually assualted. In a brief he submitted earlier this week opposing the Affordable Care Act, Marshall claims that requiring most Americans to carry health insurance or pay slightly more income taxes is just like rape:

As the Government admits, the individual mandate is designed specifically to “internalize” the risks and costs of health care, which it has the temerity to call “classic economic regulation of economic conduct.” In fact, the mandate is classic sumptuary legislation, prohibiting personal spending choices which offend the moral or religious beliefs of Congress. Thus, the Government’s individual mandate is not a regulation of commerce; it is a compelled societal duty. Indeed, the individual mandate is not voluntary commercial intercourse; it is forcible economic rape.

Marshall, of course has a long history of such opposition to modernity. An arch-nullificationist, Marshall once claimed that children with disabilities are God’s punishment to women who had abortions, and his disregard for reproductive choice and the Constitution is rivaled only by his disdain for gay people.

Nevertheless, Marshall’s latest statement is beyond the pale even by his standards. Enacting an economic regulation that is essential to the Affordable Care Act’s protections for people with preexisting conditions is absolutely nothing like rape.

Conservatives are fond of citing America’s Founding Fathers whenever it seems convenient, whether to back up their fringe beliefs that certain government programs are unconstitutional, to talk about what form of government in which they believe, and sometimes even when the person they’re citing isn’t a Founding Father at all.

Conservatives are also fond of a certain Supreme Court decision that blew up campaign finance laws and opened the door for unlimited — and often undisclosed — donations to super PACs, the campaign organizations that played a marked role in the 2010 midterm elections and have already had a substantial impact on the 2012 Republican primary.

With that in mind, ThinkProgress asked several “Founding Fathers” who attended last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference what they thought about the rise of super PACs and if they intended for elections to one day be dominated by small groups of wealthy individuals and corporations that could funnel huge sums of money into the electoral system. Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson all told ThinkProgress that super PACs were never their intention, as did a 19th century veteran of the fight for the Alamo. James Madison, meanwhile, said he anticipated the rise of super PACs, but that the domination of money in politics would “destroy the country.” Watch it:

Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act in 1994, and it’s been reauthorized without a hitch twice since then. Now that it’s up for reauthorization again, however, Senate Republicans have suddenly decided to use it as part of an anti-gay and anti-immigrant crusade. Every single Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee voted against reauthorization, with Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-IA) taking the lead against the bill:

The objections, led by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and a few conservative organizations, are not over the VAWA as a whole, but over a few new provisions in the reauthorization — specifically, protections for LGBT individuals, undocumented immigrants who are victims of domestic abuse and the authority of Native American tribes to prosecute crimes.

The Leahy bill enumerates protections for LGBT victims of domestic violence, forbidding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity by VAWA grantees.

The VAWA reauthorization also expands the availability of visas for undocumented immigrants who have been victims of domestic violence and may be reluctant to come forward because of the risk of deportation. VAWA has always protected this group of individuals, but the reauthorization would raise the cap on visas for battered women and sexual assault victims from 10,000 to 15,000. The additional visas would come from recaptured visas in previous years that haven’t been utilized.

It is a mystery why Grassley or anyone else could think that battered gay men, lesbians or immigrants (or, for that matter, Native Americans) do not need the full protection of the law. Worse, Grassley’s tactic here does not simply deny protections to these individuals, he is literally holding a bill that protects all battered women hostage in order to score a few anti-gay and anti-immigrant points.