North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper has been speaking out lately on a range of issues, at times disagreeing with laws signed by Republican governor Pat McCrory. Cooper is a Democrat who plans to run for governor in 2016. His public comments of late have sparked tensions with the McCrory administration and criticism from state GOP leaders. For some analysis of the attorney general's role, WFAE's Mark Rumsey spoke with James Tierney, a former Maine AG who now heads the National State Attorneys General Program at Columbia Law School in New York.
Here are some of the other stories catching our attention.