Plenty of battiness in the GOP belfry lately. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) wants to deport American citizens, as in the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) wonders whether the district represented by Rep. Raul Grijalva has been ceded to Mexico. Another Iowan, GOP congressional candidate Pat Bertroche, wants to implant microchips in illegals. And Colorado gubernatorial hopeful Scott McLobbyist thinks Arizona’s fascist immigration law is just peachy.

Have graying Yippies finally infiltrated the GOP? Or it it just that the lead in those Chinese-made flag lapel pins is wreaking havoc with their teensy brainpans?

Linda Greenhouse, who writes about the Supreme Court and the law for The New York Times, says she won’t be visiting Arizona again “as long as it remains a police state, which is what the appalling anti-immigrant bill that Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law last week has turned it into.”

Greenhouse — a Pulitzer Prize winner who teaches at Yale Law School — warns that all the soothing jabber about “reasonable suspicion” and “lawful contact” is so much chin music, a scanty “fig leaf of reassurance,” given that this odious law provides that a person “is guilty of trespassing by being present on any public or private land in this state” while lacking authorization to be in the United States, which she says creates “a new crime of breathing while undocumented,” a lighter shade of DWB (Driving While Black).

She goes on to say that while it’s by no means a safe bet, given the current roster of the Supremes, pre-emption by the federales seems to be the best line of attack, noting that high-court precedents “make clear that immigration is a federal matter and that the Constitution does not authorize the states to conduct their own foreign policies.”

In the meantime, she proposes that “the good people of Arizona — and anyone passing through — walk the streets of Tucson and Phoenix wearing buttons that say: “I Could Be Illegal.'”

That ought to punch their buttons.

Arizona seems to be trying to out-dingbat Colorado with the likes of John McCain, Joe Arpaio and now Gov. Jan Brewer, who just signed into law a despicable immigration bill (pun intended) that will accomplish little beyond empowering racists, harassing Hispanics and enriching attorneys.

“We must enforce the law evenly, and without regard to skin color, accent, or social status,” said Brewer. “We must prove the alarmists and the cynics wrong.”

Claro que si. I mean, c’mon, here — you think a cop who sees me banging back a Guinness or three at The Shanty in Tucson is gonna demand my green card, suspecting I swam over from County Clare for a cushy gig mowing lawns in Catalina Foothills? Puh-leeze.

The only solution to illegal immigration is to wean Americans from their lust for cheap shit, which encourages employers to rely on cheap labor, both at home and abroad. It’s not unlike the so-called war on drugs, another abysmal waste of lives, time and money. Where there is demand, there will be supply, law and order be damned.

Speaking with the Los Angeles Times, Alfredo Gutierrez, a former Arizona Senate majority leader who fought against the bill, said: “It’s a sad day for the country. This is the most oppressive piece of legislation since the Japanese internment camp act.”

And in a story by The Associated Press, Francisco Loureiro, an activist who runs a migrant shelter in the border town of Nogales, Mexico, charged that police in Arizona “already treat migrants worse than animals. There is already a hunt for migrants, and now it will be open season under the cover of a law.”

“Your papers!” My ass. If I were Obama, I’d think twice before visiting Arizona anytime soon. Sheriff Joe might roust him, demanding proof of citizenship. Be a hell of a note to go from a stylish suit in the Oval Office to pink undies in Maricopa County’s Tent City.