Dear Lindsey Graham, Lou Dobbs is making you look like a Dbag.

After watching Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert all weekend, I was delighted to learn Elena Kagan has been confirmed, Prop 8 overturned in California in a 138 page ruling making fun of the pro-Prop 8 so-called “experts” who got their "information" from the internet and discussions with like-minded friends, and Naomi Campbell actually testified against Charles Taylor in the Hague (c’mon, who really thought she’d show?!).

I was also honestly quite shocked to discover that the kind of idea that SHOULD by all rights be isolated to the far right wing of the far right wing of the Republican party is getting some play among Senators who I have previously considered to be somewhat reasonable. I am talking about the “anchor babies” craziness sweeping the conservative airways. And I am talking about Sen. Lindsey Graham, of S. Carolina who is usually not given to quite that level of craziness.

Remember Lindsey Graham? After giving NOW SUPREME COURT JUSTICE Elena Kagan a little bit of a hard time for having called the judicial confirmation process a “vapid and hollow charade,” in what was one of the funnier moments of her own confirmation hearings (he also gave her the opening for her joke about spending Christmas in a Chinese restaurant), he crossed the aisle to confirm Kagan, just as he had also voted for Sonia Sotomayor. Sounds like a reasonable guy, right?

Well former reasonable guy Lindsey Graham has gone off the rails on the subject of immigration reform (which I thought conservatives didn’t want to talk about going into midterms because they’d lose the Latino vote they need) and, of all things, the Fourteenth Amendment. Now if there is one thing I never thought I’d hear floated by formerly reasonable senators as a purportedly reasonable option, it is repealing the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Fourteenth is not just any old Amendment: not the one about not having to quarter troops in our homes (because when has that been an issue recently?) or the one prohibiting cruel and usual punishment (because we do that anyway, regardless of the Constitution), not the one creating lame duck sessions of congress (why is this in there again?) or making senators directly elected by the people (you’d think Senators should be more afraid of this one). No, the Fourteenth is the one that protects us from discrimination, defines citizenship (and means we don’t have to file complicated citizenship forms when we have our babies in the US), applies the bill of rights to the states, grants equal protection under the law to ALL PEOPLE in the US, and has always been the ONE THING conservatives point to when they tell women we don’t need our own Equal Rights Amendment because we already have the Fourteenth Amendment to watch our backs. This is the Amendment that demands African American no longer be counted as three-fifths of a person.

And yet it is this BIG FREAKING AMENDMENT that Lindsey Graham called “outdated” this week.

Because of a conservative talk show-fueled rumor that pregnant immigrants are sneaking into the US by the millions either illegally or on tourist visas to have their babies on US soil to use as “anchor babies” to get the rest of their illegal immigrant families the rights and benefits of US citizenship.

First off, immigration doesn’t work like that. Remember all those stories right at the end of Bush’s presidency about how increased immigration enforcement (and decreased common sense) was resulting in US citizen children basically becoming orphans at the hands of the government when ICE sent their parents “home” to Mexico? It isn’t like if a baby born on US soil is some sort of Green Card Midas child that confers citizenship automatically on everyone she touches.

Besides the legal issues involved, there is also a practical smackdown to the truth of these rumors of so-called “birth tourism,” where wealthy pregnant women fly in from Brazil (this is the repeated example but I don’t know why they’re picking on Brazil), have a child, then fly home with a US citizen child. Women are not allowed to fly past their 32 week of pregnancy. After the 29th week they need a certificate from their doctor stating they are still early enough along to fly and the airline reserves the right to have pregnant potential-passengers examined by a doctor if they don’t believe the certificate.

And yet, this totally irrational “anchor babies” rumor was enough to push Lindsey Graham, and a lot of people a lot crazier than Lindsey Graham, right off the Cliffs of Insanity.

Is he really prepared to withdraw all the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment and redefine citizenship such that every child born in the US has to APPLY FOR CITIZENSHIP now? Does he have any idea how much more bureaucracy that will create? To counter an imaginary onslaught of babies with imaginary powers to grant legal status? I mean, I expect this kind of crap from Jon Kyl, but really Senator Graham? REALLY?!

Speaking of people who are usually a lot crazier than Lindsey Graham, Lou Dobbs, yes LOU DOBBS, has earned a shout out from the far left, the left, the middle, and the thoughtful on this subject. He said, ON FOX NEWS (was it ballsy or was it because this is the only audience for Lou Dobbs anymore?):

“The idea that anchor babies somehow require changing the 14th Amendment, I part ways with the senators on that, because I believe the 14th Amendment, particularly in its due process and equal protection clauses, is so important. We have a law in which they become American citizens for being born here…If you’re going to insist upon the rule of law and order—and I do—I have to insist that we recognize these anchor babies as US citizens.”

LOU DOBBS SAID THAT!

So shame on you, Senator Graham, for siding with racist no-immigration-law-knowing, no-compassion-having thoughtless idiot moron buffoons on this one. And, in fact, leading the charge.

And shame on you Senators Jon Kyl, John McCain (really, man, what happened to you?), Jeff Sessions, and Mitch McConnell (even though you’re backing off your support now, the whole “I thought I read an article about it once” defense doesn’t fly).
Shame.