Of all the GOP candidates, Mitt Romney staked out the most extreme immigration positions during the Republican primary. He said his immigration plan would be to make undocumented immigrants “self-deport,” and he vowed to veto the DREAM Act. Since he effectively locked up the nomination, however, Romney tried to distance himself from his earlier hardline stances, and a Republican Party official even tried to claim that Romney is “still deciding what his position on immigration is.”

But Romney is still losing among Latino voters by an enormous (and widening) margin. While Romney has tried to moderate his immigration views from the primary to the general election, his immigration advisers and supporters still include extremely anti-immigrant officials.

KRIS KOBACH

Currently serving as Kansas’ secretary of state, Kobach is the author of harmful state and local anti-immigrant ordinances like those in Arizona, Alabama, and South Carolina. He wrote the vast majority of them as senior counselor to the restrictionist Immigration Reform Law Institute and as a private consultant. He has insisted that Romney wants SB 1070 as a national model, and he doesn’t expect Romney to soften the extreme immigration positions he took during the GOP primary. And following President Obama’s directive to halt deportations for up to 1.4 million young undocumented immigrants, Kobach called the policy “illegal.” Kobach advised Romney’s 2008 campaign on immigration and homeland security, and he returned to that role for the 2012 election after he endorsed the GOP presidential candidate in January. In April, Romney tried to distance himself from Kobach while softening his immigration positions, saying he was a “supporter,” not an “adviser” before conceding that Kobach was still an “informal adviser.”

PETE WILSON

After the former Republican California governor endorsed Romney, the presidential candidate named Wilson honorary California chair of his campaign. In a statement touting the endorsement, Romney said, “I’m honored to have Governor Pete Wilson’s support, because he’s one of California’s most accomplished leaders.” As governor of California, Wilson prominently supported Proposition 187, an anti-immigrant ballot initiative that made unauthorized immigrants ineligible for public services such as health care or public education. California voters approved the measure in 1994, a precursor to Arizona’s SB 1070, before courts declared it unconstitutional in 1997.

RUSSELL PEARCE

The former Arizona Senate president, who was ousted in a recall election, was the architect of Arizona’s infamous SB 1070. He threw his support behind Romney and said that the GOP presidential candidate’s “immigration policy is identical to mine.” And Pearce said Romney “absolutely” called for Arizona’s law to be used as a national “model” because Romney has advocated for self-deportation. “[Self-deportation] is in SB 1070,” Pearce said in April.

JAN BREWER

Citing only Romney’s “pro-business background” and his “political history,” Arizona’s nativist Republican governor endorsed Romney ahead of her state’s primary in February. Brewer is one of the nation’s most anti-immigrant governors, and she signed SB 1070, the first of a wave of anti-immigrant bills authored by Kobach.

RAY WALSER

After President Obama announced the directive to halt deportations for DREAM Act-eligible young adults, Romney refused to say whether or not he would undo the policy. But Walser, a co-chair of Romney’s campaign for issues pertaining to Latin America, said he thought Romney would get rid of it. “My anticipation is that he would probably rescind this directive were he to be elected in November,” he told The Daily Telegraph. He added that the decision would match up with the “very tough” positions Romney had taken on immigration. Walser is a senior policy adviser at the Heritage Foundation who spent 27 years working for the U.S. State Department.

LAMAR SMITH

The Texas Republican, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, became one of Romney’s earliest congressional endorsers in October 2011, choosing to back the former Massachusetts governor over Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Smith has pledged to not hold a hearing on the DREAM Act in his hearing, which Romney vowed to veto.

Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas have launched an investigation into how 21-year-old Chavis Carter was shot in the back of a patrol car Saturday night.

Carter, who died at the hospital, was in the passenger seat of a pickup truck that was pulled over by police just before 10 pm, reports WREG. According to Officer Keith Baggett who was on the scene, Officer Ron Marsh found “some marijuana” and several new plastic baggies when he searched Carter. When they ran his information through dispatch, they found that he was wanted on a warrant in Mississippi, where he lived. The cops then handcuffed him, searched him again, and put him in the back of the patrol car. While Baggett searched the vehicle, he claims he heard “a loud thump with a metallic sound” on his trunk and saw Marsh motion to him.

The thumping noise, according to the cops, was Carter shooting himself in the head.

The police report attributed the death to a self-inflicted gunshot, though when the two officers opened the squad car door, they found Carter’s hands were still cuffed behind his back. The gun, they said, was somehow missed in both searches.

“Any given officer has missed something on a search, be it drugs, knife, razor blades, this instance it happened to be a gun,” Jonesboro Police Sergeant Lyle Waterworth said after the bizarre incident. The police believe that Chavez managed to pull out a hidden gun and shot himself in spite of the handcuffs.

Carter’s mother, Teresa, however, suspects foul play: “I think they killed him, my son wasn’t suicidal.”

According to Teresa, Carter called his girlfriend while he was pulled over to tell her he’d call her from jail. She also said her son was shot in his right temple, when he was left-handed.

The two officers involved are now on administrative leave until the investigation concludes.

Watch it, courtesy of WREG:

Last week, the Federal Election Commission announced retroactively that effective March 30, 2002 all outside groups running “electioneering communications” — independent ads run within 30 days of federal primaries or nominating conventions or within 60 days of federal general elections that mention candidates but do not expressly advocate for or against them — must identify all donors contributing over $1,000 bankrolling their efforts. But Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS is taking advantage of a mistake on the FEC’s website to avoid disclosure of its donors.

The Los Angeles Times reported today that the secret-money 501(c)(4) group will be running $25 million worth of attack ads against President Obama through August 6, but still does not plan to identify who is bankrolling its ads:

According to the FEC, the electioneering communications window before the Democratic National Convention begins According to the FEC, the electioneering communications window before the Democratic National Convention begins Aug. 4. However, the commission has offered confusing guidance on the topic: Last week, its website identified the start the period as Aug. 7, which the FEC then said was a mistake, noting the correct date was Aug. 4.

“The commission regrets the error,” the FEC said in a statement posted on its website Friday. “The commission will exercise its prosecutorial discretion and will not take enforcement action with respect to communications disbursements made in reasonable reliance on the erroneous information on the website in connection with EC reporting.”

Crossroads GPS spokesman Jonathan Collegio told the paper that the group has no plans to disclose donors as it does not plan to “air ads that will trigger reporting in the [electioneering communications] window.” It is hard to imagine that Rove — who regularly appears on Fox News Channel as a political analyst — and the other operatives at Crossroads GPS were really unaware of when the Democratic National Convention begins.

Still, while the FEC might be willing to let Crossroads GPS avoid disclosure, they might want to consider pulling their August 4 through 7 advertisements. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) says he may file a lawsuit to force the group to comply, noting “I think they would have a really difficult time claiming that because of a technical FEC error, they get to violate the law.”

For the first time since 1994, the question of medical marijuana will go before a federal court. The United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has agreed to hear a lawsuit challenging the DEA’s classification of marijuana as a dangerous drug with no medical value. The ten-year-old suit, brought by Americans for Safe Access, will present scientific evidence on marijuana’s therapeutic properties.

The appeal brief calls the DEA’s refusal to analyze numerous studies on the drug’s medical uses “arbitrary and capricious,” and asks the court to order the DEA to conduct a hearing on the scientific evidence.

Marijuana is currently classified as a Schedule 1 substance with “high potential for abuse,” in the same legal classification as heroin and morphine. In spite of numerous petitions to reschedule the drug, the federal government has maintained that marijuana has no medical value and launched costly and aggressive eradication efforts. Just a few weeks ago, the Justice Department sued to close the largest medical marijuana dispensary in the country, even as Congress, in a rare bipartisan move, prepared a bill to protect medical marijuana possession.

But the conditions for the ASA’s case — in which oral arguments will be presented on the morning of October 16 — are optimal. Since the original petition was filed in 2002, studies have piled up evidence of marijuana’s benefits in the treatment of illnesses including multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s and cancer. In 2011, the National Cancer Institute listed cannabis as a complementary and alternative medicine, noting that it has been used as medicine for thousands of years. And, of course, 17 states and the District of Columbia (with Massachusetts poised to join the list) have laws on the books recognizing marijuana’s medicinal properties and enabling safe providers to open shop.

Rescheduling marijuana would help ease the tensions between these state laws and federal crackdowns. It would also remove the roadblocks that have prevented more extensive research into the drug’s properties, which, according to the American College of Physicians, is much needed.

As Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) continues his Ahab-like quest to purge voters from his state’s voter roles, the U.S. Department of Justice is again accusing Scott’s administration of illegal voter suppression.

The Miami Herald reports that a federal district court filing by the DOJ claims Scott’s purge required its prior permission — and did not have it:

The July 27 filing, known as a statement of interest, asserts that before Florida began scrubbing the rolls in search of non-citizens, it was required to submit the proposal to the federal government. Under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, five “covered” Florida counties are subject to a process known as pre-clearance: Hillsborough, Collier, Hardee, Hendry and Monroe.

The feds say Florida never submitted the new “citizenship list maintenance practices” to them for approval, even though they did submit an unrelated change for review in 2011 — the use of Social Security numbers to verify that a voter had died.

In late June different federal judge refused to grant a DOJ request for a restraining order to halt the purge on the grounds that it violate the National Voter Registration Act — even though the purge clearly violates the National Voter Registration Act, which prohibits voter roll purges within 90 days of federal elections. That case remains ongoing.

The reason Congress enacted these laws — especially the Voting Rights Act rules governing areas with a history of voter suppression — was precisely to prevent what Scott is trying to do. His purge attempts disproportionately affect minority voters and are so error-riddled that dozens of Republican county elections supervisors have refused to continue them.

In a nasty race with allegations of racism, former District Judge John Devine beat incumbent Texas Supreme Court Justice David Medina yesterday, by a 53 to 47 margin. With no Democratic candidate on the ballot this November, Devine is a shoe-in for the state’s high court.

Two Houston lawyers made news in recent days with allegations that Devine had made racist comments to them about the incumbent Medina’s background. The Dallas Morning News reported this week:

The race became steeped in controversy after two Houston lawyers contended Devine told them he was targeting Medina because “I can beat a guy with a Mexican last name.” Devine denies he said that or ran against Medina for that reason, noting that his wife is from Colombia. Instead, he contends, attorneys Scott Link and Frank Harmon were trying to push him out of the race.

Harmon and Link say that’s false. “He made horrible statements, and I understand he wants to run away from them,” said Link, a former friend of Devine’s. “We were like witnesses to a horrible accident.”

Devine is best known for having refused to remove a painting of the Ten Commandments in his courtroom and a “Bible monument” outside his courthouse — moves that earned him the endorsements of several Christian Right and Tea Party leaders. He proudly notes that he was named “Texas Size Hero” by Focus on the Family magazine.

While Medina, an appointee by Gov. Rick Perry (R), was also a strong conservative, Devine ran to his right. His overt political positions — listed on his campaign website as “The Devine 9” — on abortion, guns, and “states right’s” are a reminder of the danger of putting the judiciary up to a popular vote. Rather than running on judicial temperament or independence, Devine campaigned largely on the fact that he will not be a neutral arbiter when what he identifies as the “top nine issues currently affecting Texans” come before the Texas Supreme Court.

Welcome to Justiceline, ThinkProgress Justice’s morning round-up of the latest legal news and developments. Remember to follow us on Twitter at @TPJustice

• Former state Solicitor General Ted Cruz’s 57-43 win over Lt. Governor David Dewhurst in yesterday’s Texas Republican Senate primary runoff was heavily fueled by outside spending. Club for Growth Action alone spent more than $5.6 million on his behalf.
• A U.S. House of Representatives race in Iowa between Rep. Steve King (R) and Christine Vilsack (D) could test the limits on outside groups republishing campaign’s materials and on using official town hall meetings as campaign events.
• Following a preliminary hearing in which former clerks alleged serious ethical violations, a Pennsylvania judge ordered suspended state Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin (R) to stand trial on seven of the nine criminal counts recommended by a grand jury.
• Virginia’s law prohibiting non-residents from circulating ballot petitions was struck down by a U.S. District Court judge.
• Another federal judge is considering a challenge to the way Ohio handles provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct.
• And finally, New York City sold 28,000 pounds of spent police department shell casings — to a Georgia ammunition store that reloads and resells them.