There have been several interesting stories since the last news roundup, which was two weeks ago. 1. The General Assembly adjourned the short session when it finished the budget. The budget includes cuts for the court system, along with virtually every other part of state government. My understanding is that the AOC has allocated a big chunk of the cuts to its IT division, but there are plenty of cuts to go around. 2. Although the focus of the short session was the budget, the General Assembly took action on several criminal law bills. Perhaps the most noteworthy are the bill authorizing the collection of DNA from certain arrestees -- a topic about which I blogged here -- and the bill that is intended to outlaw video "sweepstakes." The North Carolina Bar Association's brief summary of the legislative session is available here. 3. One thing that the General Assembly didn't do is take action to ban synthetic cannabinoids, such as "spice." As I noted here, the legislature took some initial steps in that direction, but the issue did not get over the hump this session. Meanwhile, the New York Times recently ran an interesting article about legislative responses to "spice" across the country. 4. Speaking of things that haven't happened yet, the News and Observer reports that North Carolina's nominees to the Fourth Circuit, judges Jim Wynn and Albert Diaz, are still waiting to be confirmed. With the Senate now focused on Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court, it's possible [...]
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