Passage of one of the three state ballot measures to legalize marijuana in Washington, Colorado or Oregon could significantly weaken Mexican drug cartels, according to a new study by a Mexican think tank. “It is estimated that around one-third of Mexican drug gangs’ income is from marijuana, surpassed only and narrowly by cocaine,” according to the LA Times.

Legalization in even one U.S. state would likely cut into cartels’ profits by 22 to 30 percent, based on estimates that U.S.-produced marijuana would retail at a little more than half the price of illegally produced Mexican pot, the study by the Mexican Competitiveness Institute concludes. However, the study assumes that marijuana producers in the state where it is legal will distribute to customers in other states where it is illegal, an action that would inherently create a different type of illicit market and be particularly susceptible to federal prosecution.

In an apparent remake of a Simpsons sketch, Republican National Committee chief counsel John Phillippe sent a letter to the top elections officials in Nevada, Ohio, Colorado and three other states claiming that “in a significant number of cases, voting machines in your states have populated a vote for Barack Obama when a voter cast his or her ballot for Mitt Romney.” The letter does not provide any evidence that this is actually occurring. Nor does it name a single voter who experienced such an error.

Nevertheless, Fox News did not concern itself with this lack of evidence, instead running a interview this morning with top Republican voter suppression attorney Hans von Spakovsky about the “disturbing story” of early voters trying to vote for Mitt Romney “but the check went to Obama.” If anything, however, this segment did more to undermine Republican fears of machine-induced voter theft than to justify them. Despite host Eric Bolling’s repeated attempts to suggest that “deliberate” election fraud might be at work, even von Spakovsky was forced to admit that if any machine malfunctions are actually occurring “it’s probably a glitch.” Watch it:

This is not the first time the GOP raised these exact same allegations. In 2010, Republicans raised similar complains that voting machines were somehow stealing votes from Nevada GOP senate candidate Sharron Angle. In a letter responding to the GOP’s most recent allegations, Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller (D) explains that the Republican Party’s 2010 fears were entirely unwarranted:

[M]y office investigated similar complaints and rumors in 2010 with the assistance of the FBI and the Nevada Attorney General’s office and concluded that claims that our voting machines were pre-programmed, malfunctioning, or in any way preventing any voter from casting a ballot for the candidate of his or her choice were without merit. At the conclusion of that investigation, Nevada’s multi-jurisdictional Election Integrity Task Force concluded: . . .

My investigation reveals no evidence of voting machine tampering or voter fraud. It does reveal the presence of occasional human error in the election process, which cannot be avoided as long as humans are part of the process.

It should go without saying that if machines are actually malfunctioning, they should be fixed immediately. But claims of such malfunctions have been investigated before and found completely lacking. Indeed, Nevada already has numerous checks in place to prevent malfunctions from occurring. Many of the interventions the GOP requests to address so-called machine problems, such as recalibrations of the voting machines and a notice to voters to ensure their votes are being properly cast, are already policy in the state.

According to Nevada journalist Jon Ralston, there’s likely something other than real concerns about machine problems motivating the GOP’s complains — “I have no doubt the RNC is laying the groundwork for a challenge should the presidential race be close here or in some of other states where these ‘significant’ number of instances have occurred.” As America learned in 2000, President Obama doesn’t just have to win his reelection, he has to win it by a Scalia-proof majority.

Virginia and Florida, high-population swing states that could decide this presidential election, have the harshest disenfranchisement laws and bar more former and current felons from voting than any other state, a problem illustrated in a graphic from the Prison Policy Initiative. As the Brennan Center for Justice explains in its report out this week, “Disenfranchisement after criminal conviction remains the single most significant barrier to voting in the United States … These voting bans are exceptional among democratic nations. The United States is one of only two countries that disenfranchise large numbers of people for indefinite periods after they have completed their time in prison.” These laws also disproportionately impact African-American men, 13 percent of whom have lost the right to vote nationwide.

The Androscoggin County Republican Party in southern Maine put out a flier this week looking for volunteers to serve as poll “challengers”. Their responsibility is to monitor who’s voting and challenge a voters’ eligibility in certain cases. This is not the first time Republican poll challenger efforts could cause problems in Maine. The Morning Sentinel notes that in 2003, “Republican volunteers challenged 50 of 374 voters at a precinct near the University of Maine,” purposefully singling out college students. (Election officials ultimately threw out all 50 challenges as baseless.) Meanwhile, the Portland Press-Herald criticized the Androscoggin County GOP in an op-ed Thursday, writing that “Republican fliers looking for volunteers seem to be interested in making it harder to vote.”

Last week, Romney campaign co-chair John Sununu suggested that former Secretary of State and retired General Colin Powell endorsed President Obama because both men are African-Americans, and not because the deeply accomplished former cabinet secretary calmly evaluated Obama’s performance and deemed it worthy of reelection. Last night, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly made a very similar claim in a conversation with Fox’s Arthel Neville:

O’REILLY: General Powell has been, in his books, quite candid about him using affirmative action to succeed, alright? And Barack Obama did use affirmative action to, you know, be educated and something like that. Do you think that there’s any racial business here?

NEVILLE: No. No. No. No.

O’REILLY: And I’m not saying that in a pejorative — I’m not saying that in a negative — but a connection — the general and the president came up the same way. . . . You don’t think shared experience enters into General Powell’s endorsement?

NEVILLE: You’re telling me that if President Obama had not done a good job that Colin Powell — General Powell — would have supported President Obama regardless? Absolutely not true.

O’REILLY: No I’m saying that he might be cutting him a little more slack.

Watch it:

Setting aside the offensiveness of O’Reilly’s comments, Neville, who is black, deserves a great deal of credit for forcefully pushing back against a man who ranks at least a few steps above her in Fox News’ food chain. She repeatedly challenged O’Reilly, pointing out that suggesting black men are unable to look past each other’s race is exactly the same as claiming that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR) must support O’Reilly himself because both men are white. As Neville told O’Reilly, his comments are “disrespectful to General Powell” and “disrespectful to the president.” O’Reilly takes an record of success and accomplishment, and tries to “dilute it to pigmentation.”

Each day, about 3,000 young undocumented immigrants are applying for deferred action, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano explained last week. As of October 10, that added up to almost 180,000 eligible youth who were applying for temporary deportation deferrals since the policy, which President Obama announced in June, went into effect on August 15, and Napolitano said the number of applications is up to 200,000.

So far, about 4,500 undocumented immigrants have completed the process and received temporary work permits thanks to Obama’s directive, and more than 150,000 have been scheduled for biometric interviews. But it is a long, slow process that can take up to four to six months. Here’s what the process looks like:

With about 950,000 people eligible to apply immediately, almost 19 percent of applications have been received and accepted for processing by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the first two months of DACA. The last time that this many undocumented immigrants could apply for deportation deferrals was in 1986, when then-President Ronald Reagan authorized the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), a successful program that was able to legalize a large number of undocumented immigrants who were eligible in a short time period. Even with its success, only about 13 percent of potential IRCA applicants had filed their paperwork in the first three months of the program, fewer than the first two months’ worth of deferred action applications.

But if Mitt Romney is elected, the entire process for deferred action would stop. While the Republican presidential candidate has said he would not take away the temporary deportation deferrals from any undocumented immigrant who had already been approved, Romney said he would end the program to grant deportation deferrals to young undocumented immigrants who qualify. Some DREAMers say they are concerned about applying for a program that could disappear depending on who wins the presidential race on November 6.

With 950,000 potential applicants and a wait time for applications to be processed that can lasts for months — on top of the amount of time it takes for undocumented immigrants to gather the right documents and fill out the paperwork — it’s likely that tens of thousands of these young adults will still be in limbo by January when the next president is inaugurated. And if it’s Romney, it will be the end of a program that could give up to 1.7 million young undocumented immigrants temporary legal status while lawmakers continue to discuss a long-term immigration solution.

ThinkProgress blogger Adam Peck and Patrick Oakford, a research assistant at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, contributed to this report.

In remarks at a recent symposium, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg identified what she called her “dream case” on reproductive choice. It wasn’t Roe v. Wade, she said, but another case that might have better advanced the justices’ understanding of what choice really means. The 1971 case was about a woman who was discharged from the Air Force for refusing to have an abortion. Captain Susan Struck’s appeal was accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court, but the Air Force waived the policy and rendered the case moot before arguments were heard. She explains:

Susan Struck was told by her commanding officer you have a choice: you can get an abortion or you can leave the service, because pregnancy was an automatic ground for discharge. Susan Struck said, I am Catholic. I will not have an abortion. But I will use only my accumulated leave time, I have made arrangements for adoption of the child. Nonetheless, her choice was, you get an abortion or you get out.

That’s the reproductive choice case I wish had come to the Supreme Court first. Because what it was about was a woman’s decision about her life’s course. Would she bear the child or not? And perhaps the court’s understanding of the issue would have been advanced if a woman took the position: I don’t want the government to dictate my choice.

Now, a new case reveals that not much has changed in the ensuing 40 years. A week after Ginsburg’s remarks, news broke of another woman who is challenging her discharge from the Air Force in 2012, for enlisting while pregnant and unmarried. Had she had an abortion or  given the child up for adoption, officials said, she would not have been discharged.

There are some differences between the 1971 scenario and Rebecca Edmonds’ 2012 case. The plaintiff then, Susan Struck, had volunteered to give her child up for adoption and was told that was not an acceptable option, while Edmonds would have been able to serve if she had given up her child. And the 1971 rule discharged all pregnant officers from the military, whereas Edmonds would have been entitled to stay if she were married, even though Edmonds had a plan for the care of her child by the child’s father and grandparents.

In Edmonds’ case, the Air Force contends that the reason for her dismissal was fraud, because she didn’t report her change in medical condition when she became pregnant. But in a letter to Edmonds’ lawyer, Col. Kelly L. Goggins said that even if she had reported the change, she would have been placed on medical recheck, and would have only been able to commission “if she were not a single parent, for example, if she were married, or had given up the child for adoption.” In a separate conversation with an officer, Edmonds said she was told that she would have been able to serve if she had aborted the pregnancy.

Differences aside, both women were prohibited from both keeping their children and serving in the military, a choice that runs counter to the constitutional privacy interests that were the basis for Roe v. Wade. As Justice Ginsburg points out in her remarks, opportunities for women have in some ways improved dramatically since Struck’s case. At the time, Struck revealed to Ginsburg that she aspired to become a pilot, a dream both women knew then was entirely unrealistic. Now, a woman could fulfill that dream — but only if she weren’t a single parent.

[h/t to On the Edges of Science and Law for flagging Justice Ginsburg’s comments]