The Alaska Legislature on Monday will open its first full week of work this session with a crime summit and bills addressing the state’s oil and gas production tax and pensions among the highlights.

The state and Exxon Mobil are scheduled to go to school Feb. 8, and each will be looking to teach the other a lesson.

The Alaska Legislature will today open its first full week of work this session with a crime summit and bills addressing the state’s oil and gas production tax and pensions among the highlights.

It’s gonna be a sideshow.

John S. Young and eleven of Jefferson County’s major creditors say they will appeal a federal bankruptcy judge’s orders that have served to strip Young of his powers to operate the county’s financially faltering sewer system.

A lawsuit filed Monday asks the federal court in Little Rock to block Arkansas’ new state Senate district lines and make the state draw the boundaries to better serve black voters in northeastern Arkansas.

The state attorney general’s office today sued a Missouri man and two companies that control six Internet payday loan websites that the state contends offers loans to Arkansans at interest rates of more than 600 percent.

A state senator is among 24 plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit filed Monday alleging Arkansas’ new legislative redistricting plan dilutes black votes in the eastern Arkansas senate district he represents.

Sen. Frank Antenori has a message for what he calls the “food police”: Don’t get between him and his red meat.

An attorney for a death-row inmate in Arizona is raising questions about who will carry out the state’s executions after the physician who conducted the last five said he won’t do them anymore and the other execution team member’s arrest record came to light.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Appeals court judges expressed concern Thursday about whether to overrule Congress’ determination that some southern states and other jurisdictions still must have federal election monitoring to protect minority voting rights.

Some California counties are changing long-held policies about who must remain in jail while awaiting trial, allowing judges to free criminal defendants based not on whether they can afford bail but whether they’re a risk to public safety.

California officials Monday filed documents in U.S. District Court opposing extended federal oversight of two state mental hospitals, arguing that new leaders have already taken measures to improve patient care and safety.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by supermarket owners on Monday challenging the authority of California cities, including several in the Bay Area, to protect workers from being fired immediately when their company changes owners.

A Denver district judge erred by ruling that Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights can’t be considered in deciding whether the state’s school funding system is unconstitutional, Attorney General John Suthers argued Monday in an appeal of a landmark education funding decision.

The Department of Corrections is transferring 321 inmates out of administrative segregation following a new directive by the department’s executive director.

The after-effects of the 2011 Penn State child abuse scandal continue here, with both the University of Connecticut and state legislators examining possible policy changes regarding who must report such incidents.

BRIDGEPORT — It’s been expected since Aug. 13, 2010, when he walks out the front door of a federal halfway house marking the end of his prison term.

It’s been expected since Aug. 13, 2010, when he walks out the front door of a federal halfway house marking the end of his prison term.

The state panel that oversees Delaware’s criminal justice databases will review access levels at the Sussex County Sheriff’s Office amid controversy over the sheriff’s authority.

The state law that has allowed Florida Power & Light and Progress Energy to charge customers $1 billion so far for speculative nuclear power plants is unconstitutional, a group of energy advocates claims in a lawsuit before the state’s highest court.

Democratic state lawmakers say they will seek to repeal parts of Georgia’s tough new immigration enforcement law, complaining it is harming the state’s $68.8 billion farming industry.

A federal judge ordered the state Department of Human Services to correct problems in processing applications for food stamps for Hawaii’s low-income families.

Family law attorney Mimi DesJardins’ appointment to Hawaii’s District Court of the Second Circuit has been unanimously confirmed.

The Iowa Supreme Court will hear arguments next month in a lawsuit over Gov. Terry Branstad’s line-item veto of a bill that closed 36 unemployment offices in the state.

A state senator has admitted he broke campaign finance law by paying for his dry cleaning with campaign money.

State lawmakers are going after red-light and speed cameras with a renewed vigor this year with ban supporters claiming that public anger over such programs has reached a tipping point.

A spokesman says the Illinois Supreme Court will announce a policy for allowing cameras in trial courts on an experimental and limited basis.

Lawmakers from both parties are seeking ways to reduce Illinois’ growing prison population, and one has introduced legislation to restart a contentious program that let well-behaved prisoners out early.

An increased scrutiny of Illinois abortion clinics in the wake of revelations about a “house of horrors” in Philadelphia revealed that some facilities had gone up to 15 years without inspections, and two now have closed after regulators found health and safety violations.

A new Illinois law that takes effect this month imposes harsher penalties on people who defraud seniors and makes it easier to go after low-level fraud.

The Indiana Senate approved legislation Monday intended to restore Hoosier self-defense rights in the wake of a controversial Indiana Supreme Court ruling.

House Democrats are hoping the classic separation of powers between the three branches of government isn’t so expansive that it keeps Indiana’s courts from blocking $1,000-a-day fines in the ongoing right-to-work battle.

People convicted of attending animal fights would face stiffer criminal penalties under a bill approved by the Indiana Senate.

House Democrats are hoping the classic separation of powers between the three branches of government isn’t so expansive that it keeps Indiana’s courts from blocking $1,000-a-day fines in the ongoing right-to-work battle.

Allegations of neglect and abuse against six Indiana children had been reported to the Indiana Department of Child Services last year before each child died, according to a newspaper report that raised questions about the quality of the agency’s investigations and safety assessments and the services it provides to struggling families.

The so-called “driveway tax” levied by Mission to pay for road work is illegal, according to a new attorney general’s opinion.

Critics of a Massachusetts sentencing bill are pressing lawmakers to ease some of the legislation’s tougher measures.

The Patrick administration has released a 370-page “corrections master plan” that suggests Massachusetts could find itself short more than 12,000 bed spaces in jails and prisons by 2020, and concludes that without changes, the expansion required to house the inmate population could cost taxpayers up to $2.3 billion.

Residents opposing Maryland’s congressional redistricting map said they’re appealing part of their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. used $168,000 of leftover campaign funds to pay for defense attorneys for Paul Schurick, his longtime aide who was convicted on charges of electoral fraud rising out of Ehrlich’s failed run against Gov. Martin O’Malley in 2010.

When springtime trends showed that 2011 homicides in Maryland would rise by 7 percent, the governor’s office set in motion an intensified effort to arrest violent offenders wanted on warrants in areas where most of the state’s violent crime occurs: Baltimore City and Prince George’s and Baltimore counties.

What’s the best play for a Michigan state lawmaker arrested on a charge of driving while impaired?

The convening of a new legislative session wouldn’t be complete without more or less far-fetched hopes of greater bipartisan harmony.

Another lawsuit has been filed challenging Missouri’s newly redrawn legislative districts, this time focusing on the 163-member House of Representatives.

Mississippi lawmakers might ask voters to approve a constitutional amendment limiting the governor’s power to pardon convicted criminals, the chairman of the Senate Constitution Committee said Monday.

A judge on Monday postponed ruling whether some of former Gov. Haley Barbour’s pardons are invalid, including the reprieves for mansion trusties who served during his second term.

A Mississippi judge has delayed a decision on whether to invalidate some pardons issued by Haley Barbour in his final days as governor.

Former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour’s grants of commutations or pardons to more than 200 prisoners, all but eight in his final days in office, disproportionately benefited white offenders among a predominantly black prison population, a Reuters analysis found.

Just weeks after former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour touched off an uproar by granting clemency to hundreds of convicts in his final days of office, including to a handful convicted for murder, a judge could reverse some of the controversial pardons on Monday.

The sheer number of pardons handed out by outgoing Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour – over 200 – left many Mississippians in shock. What may not have been so surprising is that white prisoners were four times more likely than black ones to get the gubernatorial benefit of the doubt.

Mississippi Chief Justice Bill Waller Jr. will lead a discussion Tuesday on raising the salaries of the state’s judges.

When Thomas Ailes heard from a friend that he’d been pardoned for a marijuana conviction from the 1970s, he didn’t wait for the Mississippi Parole Board to mail him the paperwork.

Mississippi officials are correct to add to the penalties for cellphone use in state prisons – to deter illegal enterprises behind bars.

The attorney general’s office asked the Montana Supreme Court on Monday to keep in place the state’s century-old ban on direct spending by corporations on political candidates or committees until the U.S. Supreme Court reviews the law.

A judge has ruled that Montana’s medical marijuana law doesn’t shield providers of the drug from federal prosecution, delivering a new blow to an industry reeling from a state and federal crackdown.

Until a few weeks ago, you probably thought that I was the baddest Santa you’d ever seen.

With fresh ammunition from a UNC law school report, activists are renewing their call for state officials to take legal action against Aero Contractors Ltd.

North Dakota Tax Commissioner Cory Fong says a Republican state lawmaker won’t get favored treatment on her overdue income tax bill.

Sen. Charlie Janssen’s Voter ID bill is aimed at stopping a crime — voter impersonation — that basically is nonexistent.

Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning remained singularly focused Monday on a campaign message of reducing the size and scope of government as he completed filing as a 2012 Republican Senate candidate.

Gov. Chris Christie today nominated an openly gay African-American Republican mayor and a Korean-American assistant attorney general to the state’s highest court.

Funeral expenses for police officers, firefighters, EMTs and other first-responders killed in the line of duty may soon be covered by the state.

New Jersey medical marijuana advocates are decrying the state Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the appeal of a multiple sclerosis patient who was busted for pot possession.

Parole requirements would be eased for some prisoners and job restrictions lifted for convicted felons under a package of bills that Democratic sponsors said Monday would redirect state funds from incarceration to rehabilitation.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Transcripts of secretly recorded meetings about state investments during Gov. Bill Richardson’s administration show the governor was calling the shots on decisions that steered millions of dollars to a political supporter’s son, an attorney for a whistle-blower alleged Monday.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The decision last month by city officials in Albuquerque to do away with the city’s red-light camera program didn’t bar the city from reviving the program at some point.

ALBUQUERQUE — A former financial adviser for the State of New Mexico told his partners at a secretly taped meeting that close associates to Bill Richardson, then the governor, controlled where they would invest the state’s money, according to a lawsuit.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Gov. Susana Martinez is urging the New Mexico Legislature to crack down on public corruption.

The ads on buses and billboards around the state are dramatic, with pictures of men, women and children and declarations of “Stop Slavery,” and “We are not for sale.”

No one filed to run against the three Nevada Supreme Court justices who are up for re-election this year, so the three will retain their seats on the state’s highest court.

If the Legislature passes the measure, New York would be the first state to take DNA samples from everyone convicted of a misdemeanor or felony.

Some of the biggest banks in the country are reportedly close to a settlement with authorities over the so-called robo-signing scandal in which mortgage company officials signed and notarizeed foreclosure documents without properly reviewing them.

A Tulsa doctor’s license was revoked for illegally distributing controlled drugs, and an Enid doctor received a $15,000 fine for having a sexual relationship with a patient during the last meeting of the Oklahoma State Board of Medical Licensure and Supervision.

The prosecutors in the bribery case against a former Senate leader have found a new witness — a Nichols Hills man in prison for stealing $10 million from an oil and gas company.

After noticing an interest on social media sites about wildfires last year, Oklahoma City Fire Department officials decided to explore ways to use these avenues to inform the public and the news media.

The state of Oregon is defending court rulings that have stymied legislative efforts to overhaul the pension system for public employees.

New steps to help Oregon police and prosecutors combat elder abuse will be taken in the Oregon Legislature’s 2012 session, which starts Feb. 1.

Oregon Supreme Court Justice Thomas A. Balmer will succeed Chief Justice Paul De Muniz to preside over the state’s highest court, the state judicial department announced today.

A state liquor inspector has resigned after allegations that he had sex with his wife and with a girlfriend in an office in the Hillsboro Police Department’s East Precinct. He also was accused of using a state account to buy gas for his personal car.

After four hours of hearing complaints about the new House and Senate district maps, the state Supreme Court vowed Monday to render a verdict “with all due haste.”

State Rep. Bill DeWeese’s former chief of staff painted a distinctly unflattering picture of his ex-boss as DeWeese’s corruption trial began Monday in Dauphin County Court.

Democratic lawmakers and citizens upset over the newly approved state House and Senate districts will have their day in court on Monday, when the state Supreme Court is scheduled to hear nine challenges to those maps.

It would have been a dramatic scene: Joe Paterno on the stand. One of those celebrity court moments that would have drawn talking heads from around the country to analyze every word.

In the more than two years since corruption charges were filed against him, state Rep. Bill DeWeese has never flagged in insisting he is innocent.

SOUTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. — Former House Minority Leader Robert A. Watson was arrested early Sunday morning and charged with possession of marijuana after a plow operator called the South Kingstown police to report an erratic driver.

Authorities in South Carolina are worried that synthetic narcotics sold over the counter could make a comeback in the state, despite a recent ban.

The South Dakota House has rejected a measure that would increase search fees charged to people who want to see court records.

Despite innocuous names such as Happy Hour and Night Lights, a fast-growing family of drugs is landing more and more people in emergency rooms. Soon, users in South Dakota could find themselves in another institution: jail.

Authorities have busted two businesses in Rapid City and one in Deadwood for allegedly selling synthetic marijuana and other products that mimic the effects of illegal drugs.

South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley says the state’s prison inmates should get only one chance to argue their lawyers did a bad job representing them.

Senate Judiciary Chairwoman Mae Beavers has withdrawn her proposal to strip Tennessee courts of the power to overturn laws enacted by the state legislature.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed suit against the U.S. Department of Justice on Monday in an effort to speed enforcement of the state’s new voter ID law.

The Texas Supreme Court’s recent decision to forgo review of a case involving Austin Community College cleared the way for financing and construction of a campus in Kyle.

Uncertainty over the fate of health reform, centered on the Supreme Court case and the presidential election, has led some states to adopt a wait-and-see approach that may make it impossible for them to meet Health and Human Service’s timeline for building their own insurance exchanges.

CHICAGO—Officials moved closer on Monday to a landmark settlement with five large banks of a government investigation of alleged foreclosure abuses. State and federal officials hope to announce early next month a deal valued at as much as $25 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that regulation of the nation’s slaughterhouses is exclusively up to the federal government and struck down a California law that required immediate euthanization of livestock that are too sick or weak to walk.

The Supreme Court can pack large portents in small details. When in late March it considers the constitutionality of Obamacare, there will be 5 1/2 hours of oral argument — the most in almost half a century. This is because the individual mandate (Does Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce extend to punishing the inactivity of not buying insurance?) is just one of the law’s constitutionally dubious features.

ST. LOUIS — A crude new method of making methamphetamine poses a risk even to Americans who never get anywhere near the drug: It is filling hospitals with thousands of uninsured burn patients requiring millions of dollars in advanced treatment — a burden so costly that it’s contributing to the closure of some burn units.

Saying it is time for new leadership, Utah Supreme Court Chief Justice Christine Durham will relinquish her position this spring, but not her seat on the panel.

State senators began exploring a plan Friday that would restrict public access to juvenile court records, preventing businesses from assessing those crimes in the hiring process.

GRAYS HARBOR COUNTY – Inside the Stafford Creek state prison, an inmate serving time for murder works quietly at a desk, using computer-assisted-design tools. He is putting final touches on a blueprint for a bunk bed that might be built for a university’s dorms.

A new round of criminal charges is coming soon against at least a couple of Gov. Scott Walker’s former county staffers for doing extensive campaign activity while on the taxpayers’ dime, sources say.

A Kanawha County lawmaker working to make a dozen popular cold and allergy remedies available only by prescription said supporters of the idea are engaged in “hand-to-hand combat” with pharmaceutical lobbyists.

West Virginia led the nation in population decline in the 1980s, both in sheer numbers and in percentage of population lost.

Senate Majority Leader John Unger said he’s excited that a lawsuit over West Virginia’s congressional districts is headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

It’s probably just as well that the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay Friday that likely will allow the 2012 Congressional election to proceed under either the seemingly unconstitutional “Mason County flip” plan, or the current and essentially similar plan adopted in 1991, since chances looked hopeless that the Legislature could have reached a consensus and passed a revised plan by the end of this week.

A federal judge is set to hear an anti-abortion group’s request for a court order requiring the state to allow it to display its materials near the Wyoming State Capitol.

The office of the Wyoming attorney general has asked a federal judge to deny an anti-abortion group’s request to allow the group to display its materials in a walkway leading to the state Capitol during next month’s legislative session.

A federal judge is set to hear an anti-abortion group’s request for a court order requiring the state to allow it to display its materials near the Wyoming State Capitol.