Roy Cooper says state banking laws should be allowed to work.

In a friend of the court brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, the North Carolina attorney general joined his colleagues from 48 other states to argue that federal laws should not override state consumer protection efforts.

In Cuomo v. The Clearing House Association, the justices are considering whether New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo can enforce fair lending laws against national banks who gave subprime loans.

"Right now, we need all hands on deck to protect consumers from bad loans," Cooper said in a statement. "Irresponsible lending helped get us into this economic mess, and these times call for more oversight and enforcement of tough consumer protection laws, not less."

In the brief, Cooper and the other attorneys general argue that states have "a long track record of consumer protection enforcement" in cases involving national banks and says barring them from those efforts would be "short-sighted."

He specifically cites North Carolina's 1999 anti-predatory lending law, which he sponsored as a state senator, as an example of state efforts that went beyond the federal government's.

It's Facebook's turn in the hot seat.

A group of state attorneys general including Roy Cooper have turned their attention from MySpace to upstart social networking site Facebook.

On Monday, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said his office has subpoenaed Facebook and accused it of not protecting young users from sexual predators.

Cooper said he met with Facebook last week on the issue. (Reuters)

Investigators from New York who posed as young girls and upset parents said Facebook did not respond quickly to complaints that they were solicited online. (NYT)