The N.C. Department of Justice is reviewing its gift rules.

"We're currently reviewing our policies to see what additions need to be made," Noelle Talley, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Roy Cooper, said in an e-mail.

Talley said many of the department's employees, particularly lawyers, already have to abide by professional ethics rules.

Women are well represented in the attorney general's office.

Although there are few female district attorneys or sheriffs in North Carolina, nearly half of the staff attorneys in Roy Cooper's office are women — 142 out of 297 attorneys. They handle civil and criminal cases, offer consumer protection and provide legal advice to state boards and commissions.

According to spokeswoman Noelle Talley, a number of women also serve in leadership roles in the Department of Justice. Out of the 110 leadership positions at the State Bureau of Investigation, 21 are held by women, including Director Robin Pendergraft.

Cooper appointed Pendergraft in 2001, making her the first woman to hold that post.

In addition, Cooper's chiefs of staff, Kristi Hyman and her predecessor Julia White, are both women, as is the head of the N.C. Justice Academy, which provides training to local law enforcement agencies.

"He's made it a priority to make sure that women are well-represented throughout the Department of Justice," Talley said.

The anonymous blogger behind Draft Coop says it's an experiment.

In an e-mail to Dome, the author of a blog encouraging Attorney General Roy Cooper to run for U.S. Senate in 2010 said he would be the best candidate.

"The only thing I can do to make that happen is to speak out and see if others agree," the e-mail reads. "I've never been a blogger before, so this was sort of an experiment."

The blogger, a Democrat occasionally active in the party, has never met Cooper and claims to have no personal stake in the issue.

"I'd rather not go into why I'm remaining anonymous (that would kind of defeat the purpose) but I will say that I have no connection to the Department of Justice or to Coop himself," the e-mail reads. "I don't know how long I'll run the blog — probably until Coop says that he's running or not!"

Incidentally, the blogger is a Dome fan and claims the name was inspired by an old post about possible 2008 Senate candidates.

Cabinet members oversee more money than the Council of State.

A review of the 2007-08 budgets for the 10 appointed members of the governor's Cabinet show that they typically oversee larger budgets than the 10 statewide elected officials.

Only the departments of Public Instruction, Justice and Agriculture come close, and the superintendent of public instruction does not have similar authority over that department as a Cabinet official.

The smallest Cabinet budget was larger than all but three of the Council of State budgets.

Public Instruction: $9.5 billion

Justice: $121.7 million

Agriculture: $98.4 million

Treasurer: $38.5 million

Insurance: $36.2 million

Labor: $25.3 million

Auditor: $15.9 million

Secretary of State: $11.9 million

Governor: $6.7 million

Lieutenant Governor: $914,122

As before, the figures include money received from both state and federal sources. As a major player in the state budget, it goes without saying that the governor has more authority over state spending than these numbers indicate.

The revised numbers for 2008-09 are not yet available.

State Department of Justice employees had an uncomfortable day without air conditioning, phones or Internet access after a ruptured pipe flooded the sub-basement of the Old Education Building in downtown Raleigh late Wednesday.

The power was restored before the work day began, but the air conditioning didn't come back on until early afternoon, said Jill Lucas, a spokeswoman for the Department of Administration, which manages state buildings.

Noelle Talley, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said phone and Internet service was still an issue at the end of the work day.

She went home after several hours to check email.

"I have a laptop I take back and forth to work," Talley said. "It's convenient at a time like this."

Being a budget writer has its perks.

As a first-time Senate Appropriations co-chair, Sen. Kay Hagan got a few provisions in the 2003 budget to help out her home district and other pet projects.

Here's a quick look:

Millennium Campus: Hagan canceled the proposed sale of a former school for deaf children, then gave the land to N.C. A&T and UNC-Greensboro for a research campus (Section 6.20).

Tuition Promise: Hagan promoted a provision that gave free tuition to state universities to all graduates of the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics (Section 9.4).

Furniture Market: At Hagan's request, the budget included $900,000 for a free shuttle service for the twice-yearly High Point Furniture Market (Section 29.17).

Civil Rights Museum: Hagan sought $1 million for a long-planned International Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro, but it was cut by the House.

Hagan also added a provision calling testing the backlog of rape kits a "priority" for the N.C. Department of Justice (Section 14.7) and funding five pilot programs to teach financial literacy to high school students (Section 7.35).

She also limited a Republican proposal to require reports on spending by nonprofits that receive state money to those with grants of more than $300,000 (Section 6.21).

The Council of State won't budge on its approval of the state's revised execution protocol.

Attorneys for the council responded Monday to a group of five condemned inmates who appealed the council's approval of the protocol. Attorneys with the N.C. Department of Justice filed the response in Wake Superior Court, Titan Barksdale reports.

The inmates have said the council's approval in February 2007 was improper because it didn't hear from their attorneys first.

The council contends that the inmates don't have the right to challenge the protocol in court because the state Department of Correction offers inmates a way to challenge it. The council, a group of the state's top elected officials, added that the prisoners have failed to show they are harmed by the execution protocol.

"Injury only occurs if the execution protocol is improperly implemented," the council's response said.

More after the jump.

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