In rolling out his own cuts, Richardson vetoed important language in a budget bill that the Legislature passed in October, an action — replacing legislative cuts with his own — that some state lawmakers are saying was unconstitutional. There’s a debate among lawmakers whether to challenge Richardson in court.

One of the states really struggling is Florida, which had the nation’s second-highest foreclosure rate in November, surpassing California, reports the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Moving away from financial matters, S.C. House lawmakers Wednesday declined to impeach Gov. Mark Sanford, but the special House impeachment panel censured him for bringing “ridicule, dishonor, disgrace and shame” on the state, its citizens and the governor’s office, according to the State newspaper. Censure is an official rebuke.

In Norway President Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday morning, days after announcing plans to deploy 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan. In his acceptance speech, Obama directly confronted the seeming paradox of receiving the prestigious peace prize while serving as a war president, the Washington Post reported. In trying to pursue both security and peace, he said, “war is sometimes necessary.”

“We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes,” Obama said in his speech, known as the Nobel lecture. “There will be times when nations — acting individually or in concert — will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.”

Now to the realm of theoretical science, the new Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile loop underneath the Swiss-French border, has jumped out in front of its American counterpart in the race to understand physics in the moments after the Big Bang. This week the Collider accelerated protons to energies of 1.2 trillion electron volts apiece and then crashed them together, eclipsing a record for collisions held by an American machine, the Tevatron, at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois.In the realm of science, reports the New York Times.

Turning to prehistoric geology, you ever wonder how the Mediterranean Sea came to be? The BBC reports on a study that explains how a catastrophic flood filled the basin where the sea is now over a two-year period.

U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, better known as a “solemn-faced” conservative Republican from Utah, also is a Hanukkah song writer. And he loves Barbra Streisand. Yep, you read that right. Hatch, also known for his decades-long friendship with the late Ted Kennedy, has penned a Hanukkah song for the Jewish people, according to the New York Times. And he’s talking about it.

From the media world, here’s another name to add to the list of someone taking a buyout at the New York Times: metro reporter Jennifer 8. Lee. In addition to her distinctive name, Lee was viewed by some as one of the bright young stars at the Times. A few years ago, I got the chance to ask Ms. Lee about her distinctive middle, er, integer. We were at the same journalism conference in Cambridge, Mass. Like many of the New York Times staffers I’ve met or know, she was very approachable. Ms. Lee explained the 8 was taken from a Chinese character. If you want to know more, here’s her Wikipedia page. In addition to her work at the Times, she has written a book on the history of Chinese food in the U.S., Fortune Cookie Chronicles.

New Mexico is facing a difficult times economically, like much of the nation. New revenue estimates for the state released Thursday just confirm how bad it is: New Mexico is staring at a potential budget gap of $550 million to $600 million, and some state lawmakers predict it will get worse.

Elsewhere, the bad economy is forcing state officials into situations that are making news. In the Sunshine State, class sizes in Florida’s public schools crept upward this year for the first time since 2002, a reversal fueled by Florida’s worsening budget crisis, according to the Orlando Sentinel. And in Louisiana, the administration of Gov. Bobby Jindal is considering the privatization of more of the state’s employee health-insurance program operations, reports the Baton Rouge Advocate.

Moving away from the state budget watch, South Carolina can’t claim a monopoly on state officials with a wandering eye. Yes, I’ve made a few cracks at the expense of S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford. But one state over, in Georgia, a similar-sounding soap opera has taken a dark turn. On Thursday, the Georgia House Speaker Glenn Richardson announced that he will resign Jan. 1, nearly a month after trying to kill himself and four days after his ex-wife told the world he had cheated on her with a lobbyist, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Meanwhile, Sanford seems to have scored somewhat of a victory. A legislative committee contemplating whether he should be impeached has dismissed 28 of 37 ethics charges against the governor, reports All Headline News.

A day after the New York legislature killed a bill to allow same-sex marriage, New Jersey’s version of the legislation appeared very much alive, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. But advocates have a narrow window, the paper reports:

Proponents of the bill are urgently pushing for its passage in the next few weeks. While Gov. Corzine has said he will sign it if it reaches his desk, Gov.-elect Christopher J. Christie, who takes office Jan. 19, has said he would veto it, which means the issue would most likely be a nonstarter at least until Christie leaves office.

On the media front, it appears the New York Times is about to go through a painful period. Starting next week, managers may start picking newsroom staff for a new round of layoffs, reports the New York Post. Hearing this makes my heart — and head — hurt.

Then there’s this troubling development: Some editors at The Dallas Morning News have started reporting directly to executives outside the newsroom who oversee advertising sales, under a restructuring that overturns longstanding traditions in American newspapers aimed at shielding news judgments from business concerns, reports the New York Times.

With millions now watching TV on their computers, can the media companies put the Hulu genie back in the bottle? That’s the question asked by the New York Times in the wake of yesterday’s announced deal giving Comcast, the country’s largest cable operator, ownership of NBC.

And here’s a list of 10 web trends to watch for in 2010 from Mashable’s Pete Cashmore.

Gov. Beverly Perdue is fighting the court order, saying that the convicted killers and rapists would be let out from prison with no provision for any continued supervision after their release. Over time, she said, more than 120 people serving life sentences could qualify for early release under the Supreme Court’s ruling.

The lack of supervision has some North Carolina state lawmakers calling for a special legislative session, during which the Legislature could pass legislation requiring supervision, but at least one defense attorney has said supervision requirements wouldn’t be constitutional.

Meanwhile, Fort Hood was shocked by a mass rampage Thursday. Here’s more about the killer and what the scene in Texas looks like nearly a day after 13 people were killed.

In the area of more bad economic news, the nation’s employment rate topped 10 percent after the federal labor department announced that the economy had shed 190,000 jobs in October, the New York Times reports.

Twelve states and the District of Columbia urged the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday to adopt more rigorous national policies so they can meet federal air pollution reduction requirements for the region, according to the Baltimore Sun. The story gets at one of the difficulties in fighting pollution when you’re focused on borders. The paper quotes the director of the Maryland Department of the Environment’s Air and Radiation Management Administration as saying that “though many states on the commission have made strides in cleaning the air, meeting EPA requirements is difficult when a lot of the pollution comes from other states.”

Here’s a direct quote:

“On our worst days, up to 70 percent of our problem comes from an upwind area, which we have no control over,” (director Ted) Aburn said. “So to continue making progress in Maryland, we not only need to do the right thing within our border, we need to get help from the EPA to ensure things take place in” neighboring states.

The states’ request to the EPA asks the federal agency to put harsher restrictions on pollution sources such as industrial boilers, consumer products and asphalt paving. It said the rules are necessary to meet the air quality requirements set forth by the Clean Air Act.

The Iranian regime has responded to mass protests in Tehran this week by cracking down on foreign journalists. Two Canadian, one Japanese and one Danish journalist are thought to have been arrested for “unauthorised reporting” on demonstrations that saw tens of thousands of opposition supporters take to the streets on Wednesday, reports the Times of London.

Meanwhile in Cleveland, the New York Times reports on the aftermath of last week’s gruesome find of 11 decomposing bodies in a house there.

And the melodrama that is S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford’s life these days continues. Sanford and a top state lawmaker are clashing over what exactly a state ethics commission can release publicly from its investigation into allegations of impropriety by Sanford, reports the Greenville News. At issue is an investigatory report the ethics board is compiling.

According to the News:

In a unanimous vote, the justices ruled that neither Sanford nor House Speaker Bobby Harrell had met the legal test required for a court order withholding or releasing the report. But the justices also found that Sanford totally waived his confidentiality in the case and that the law only prevents the release of the Ethics Commission’s “work product and internal investigative process” in the probe.

South Carolina House leaders have said they want to see the report before deciding whether to impeach Sanford, though a resolution for impeachment is expected to be filed Nov. 17 regardless of whether the report is released by then.

Idaho’s fired transportation director says in a legal complaint that she was forced out after refusing to send unnecessary state work and money to politically connected companies, according to the Spokane (Wash.) Spokesman-Review.

In the most political town in the nation, Tucker Carlson confirmed to Politico that he’s hired a former Roll Call writer and RNC staffer as an editor at a Washington-based conservative online news site, The Daily Caller.

In the hard-to-believe category, Sesame Street is celebrating its 40th anniversary next week. Here’s a cool, little profile of that wonderful show that appears in USA Today.