Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) has often disagreed with the Republican party’s increasingly hardline immigration positions. He called GOP immigration policies “short-sighted” in June. And in January, he said that “it makes no sense” for states to pass harmful anti-immigrant laws like Arizona’s and Alabama’s — both written by Kris Kobach, the Romney campaign’s informal immigration adviser — because they turn off Latino voters.

Bush repeated his criticism of his party’s immigration policies Tuesday:

Speaking at a panel discussion at the Republican National Convention, Bush repeated his frequent warning that the party must change its tone, an admonition he has frequently raised about the party’s hardline position on immigration.

“The future of our party is to reach out consistently to have a tone that is open and hospitable to people who share values,’’ he said, adding “the conservative cause would be the governing philosophy as far as the eye could see … and that’s doable if we just stop acting stupid.”

In an interview yesterday, Bush told Univision’s Jorge Ramos that the Republican party has an issue with its tone when talking to Latino voters, and he said “there’s a price to pay” for continuing to focus on extreme immigration laws. “You have to show a respect that the louder, angrier voices of the Republican party don’t understand,” Bush added.

Increasingly, the Republican party is becoming more extreme on immigration issues. Mitt Romney staked out most far-right positions on immigration during the GOP primary, and the only area of immigration policy where he has been consistent is his support for harsh enforcement measures, like state laws to mirror Arizona’s SB 1070 and encouraging self-deportation. The GOP’s platform even calls for cutting off federal funds from colleges that offer in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants, which would endanger Pell Grants and research funding.

As Ann Romney insists that Latino voters need to “get past some of their biases” and support Republicans, it’s unlikely that GOP officials will take Bush’s advice and moderate their immigration policies.

Three months after a federal judge blocked much of Florida’s year-old voter suppression law as an unconstitutional infringement on speech and voting rights, the same judge agreed Tuesday to permanently remove the restrictions on voter registration drives, pending final confirmation that a federal appeals court has dismissed the case. In a settlement, the civil rights groups challenging the law and the state agreed not to appeal the case.

HB 1355, enacted by the state legislature’s Republican majority and signed by Gov. Rick Scott (R) — went into effect last July, putting major new restrictions on groups who work to register new voters. The law imposed harsh new restrictions on third-party voter registration groups, requiring them to turn in completed registration forms 48 hours — to the minute — after completion, or face fines.

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle, in his May order, put the restrictions on hold, finding “the statute and rule impose burdensome record-keeping and reporting requirements that serve little if any purpose, thus rendering them unconstitutional even to the extent they do not violate the [National Voter Registration Act].”

Unfortunately, before the law was struck down, it had a clear effect: driving down voter registration numbers in Florida. The Florida Times-Union reported this week that Democratic voter registration in the state “all but [dried] up” in the wake of the law’s enactment.

The Republican National Convention Tuesday adopted a party platform that embraces the highly unpopular Citizens United ruling, opposes meaningful campaign finance disclosure, and actually calls for allowing donors to give more money to politicians.

In a section entitled “The First Amendment: Speech that is Protected” the platform states:

The rights of citizenship do not stop at the ballot box. They include the free speech right to devote one’s resources to whatever cause or candidate one supports. We oppose any restrictions or conditions that would discourage Americans from exercising their constitutional right to enter the political fray or limit their commitment to their ideals. As a result, we support repeal of the remaining sections of McCain- Feingold, support either raising or repealing contribution limits, and oppose passage of the DISCLOSE Act or any similar legislation designed to vitiate the Supreme Court’s recent decisions protecting political speech in Wisconsin Right to Life v. Federal Election Commission and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

The Supreme Court has consistently held that free speech does not mean one can give as much as he or she wants to political candidates. Even in his 5-4 Citizens United majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy acknowledged that the Buckley v. Valeo ruling found that unlimited contributions directly to a political candidate can “give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”

In the same opinion, Kennedy wrote that disclosure “is the less-restrictive alternative to more comprehensive speech regulations.” But by opposing the DISCLOSE Act and other efforts to disclose who pays for independent expenditures, the GOP is endorsing a system in which voters cannot determine and evaluate who pays for political speech.

With groups like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spending millions on ads attacking Democrats without disclosing any of their donors, it is no wonder that the Republicans are embracing the status quo.

Three quarters of Americans believing there is too much money in politics. The Republican delegates are apparently among the only people in the country who think things would be better with more of it.

The New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program is demonstrably ineffective and damaging to police reputation. Now it comes to light that stop-and-frisk is also very expensive. The New York City taxpayers paid a total of $22.8 million to end 35 lawsuits against the NYPD worth over $100,000 each in the past year, DNAinfo reports.

The NYPD has been hit with lawsuit after lawsuit claiming police violated civil rights between July 1, 2011 and June 30, 2012. Examples include a 12-year-old girl arrested for doodling on her desk with a green erasable marker and a 38-year-old veteran who was punched and pepper-sprayed while discussing Memorial Day barbecue plans with friends on a street corner. The two plaintiffs received $115,000 and $324,000 respectively. A class-action lawsuit accusing police of illegally arresting people for loitering cost the city $15 million.

Unsurprisingly, the settlements coincide with a rise in civil rights complaints:

The payments also come as accusations of civil rights violations have risen in recent years, according to the city comptroller’s office. Between July 1, 2010, and June 30, 2011, 2,241 civil rights claims were filed against the NYPD — up 23 percent from the 1,826 claims filed a year earlier.

The city’s overzealous stop-and-frisk program is notorious for its disproportionate targeting of young black and Latino men. The number of police stops has increased 600 percent since 2002, and in 2011 alone, the NYPD stopped young black men more times than the total number of young black men in New York City. Meanwhile, the number of guns pulled off the streets during these random searches has decreased, and the number of shootings remain unchanged.

The broadest legal challenge to stop-and-frisk yet will go to court next March, arguing the police improperly implement the program along racial lines.

TAMPA, Florida — Hundreds of citizens rallied nearby the Republican National Convention Tuesday, protesting the spread of voter suppression laws across the country over the past two years.

Florida has been the epicenter of voter suppression since 2011. Last year, state Republicans passed a law slashing early voting in the Sunshine State, including cutting out the last Sunday before the election, a day that African American churches utilized to drive their congregations to the polls. The law also put significant new restrictions on voter registration groups, forcing the League of Women Voters to shut down their operations in the state. (This portion of the law has since been blocked by a federal judge.) This year, Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) attempted a failed voter purge that would have disproportionately targeted Latino and Democratic voters, hindering their lawful right to vote.

Voters like Sara Ailker were fed up. She held a sign at the rally that read, “Rick Scott, hands off my vote!!” These laws are personal for Ailker, who told ThinkProgress about her friend in Georgia whose photo ID expired and might soon lose her right to vote. “It’s a catch-22 trying to get her a voter ID,” said Ailker.

Photos from the rally:

One speaker at the event noted that Hillsborough County is number one in the nation in trying juvenile offenders as adults. Many received felony convictions, which strips them of their right to vote in Florida. “That’s voter suppression,” the speaker cried, pointing to the 1.5 million residents who cannot vote in the state because of a past felony conviction.

As detailed by the Center for American Progress and others, conservatives have proposed nearly 200 voter suppression bills across the country since 2011, successfully enacting over two dozen of them. They have including laws requiring photo ID to vote, cuts to early voting, and restrictions on voter registration groups. The Brennan Center estimates that more than 5 million people could be disenfranchised because of these new laws.

During Tuesday night’s Republican Convention, Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC) complained that the “hardest part” of her job is “this president” opposing South Carolina’s voter ID law, which would require a photo identification as a prerequisite for voting. But just hours before Haley took the stage, opponents of the measure uncovered new emails revealing that the legislation may have been racially motivated.

South Carolina is suing the Justice Department in an effort to reinstate the law — which the administration struck down for violating the Voting Rights Act — even though state officials could not show any examples of actual in-person voter impersonation fraud and have conceded that requiring a photo identification to vote would not actually prevent a determined voter impersonator from voting as someone else.

During Tuesday’s trial, critics who charge that voter ID is designed to disenfranchise minority voters appeared to have scored an important victory when they presented the law’s author state Rep. Alan Clemmons (R), with racist emails he received while drafting the legislation:

Garrard Beeney, who represented the civil rights groups, presented emails sent to and from Clemmons’ personal account between 2009 and 2011, when he was working on the law.

One, from a man named Ed Koziol, used racially charged rhetoric to denounce the idea that poor, black voters might lack transportation or other resources necessary to obtain photo ID. If the legislature offered a reward for identification cards, “it would be like a swarm of bees going after a watermelon,” Koziol wrote.

Beeney asked Clemmons how he had replied to this email. Clemmons hesitated a moment before answering, “It was a poorly considered response when I said, ‘Amen, Ed, thank you for your support.’”

Clemmons also claimed that he did not a remember giving out packets of peanuts with cards that said “Stop Obama’s nutty agenda and support voter ID,” but Beeney asserted that the lawmaker had testified in June that he had done so.

Mitt Romney has never said whether he would undo President Obama’s immigration directive to offer deferred action to DREAM Act-eligible young adults, only saying that he will work with Congress “to put in place a long-term solution.” But Ted Cruz, the Republican Senate nominee in Texas, insisted that the GOP presidential candidate should end the policy:

Asked by Telemundo whether Romney should reinstate deportations of young people granted deferred action, Cruz said, “I do.”

“I think it is without authority, and we’re a nation of rule of law, and it is not defending anyone’s freedom to be undermining rule of law,” he said of President Obama’s June announcement that his administration would grant work authorizations and deferred action — reprieve from deportation concerns for two years — to some undocumented young people.

Cruz said the U.S. should be a country that celebrates legal immigration “who follow the rules” instead of supporting the deferred action policy. That’s not a surprising position from a GOP candidate who campaigned on the fact that once fought to ensure that the state would execute an undocumented immigrant.

In his Telemundo interview, Cruz added that he doesn’t “think the Hispanic community is behind efforts for amnesty.” But a poll from Latino Decisions shows that Latino voters are very supportive of Obama’s deportation directive as well as the DREAM Act.