Embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has made a point of regularly going to work at his office in Chicago. He has signed legislation and issued pardons. He has sent out press releases about predatory lending and fighting poverty.

But his arrest on federal corruption charges has clearly complicated his work as the state's chief executive and already cost the state some $20 million. The state is facing a potential $2.5 billion budget deficit and the governor doesn't have the same horsepower — or clout — to address the problem that he had just a month ago.

No one in the state capital trusts Blagojevich enough to give him authority to trim the budget on his own, as he requested in November. Any other idea he advances would probably be rejected out of hand. Yet no other official can take the lead.

"Everything just comes to a halt. You have complete paralysis," said House Republican Leader Tom Cross of Oswego.

Blagojevich, a second-term Democrat, was arrested Dec. 9 on charges accusing him of scheming to swap President-elect Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat for profit, shaking down a hospital executive for campaign donations and other wrongdoing.

The governor has defiantly insisted he's done nothing wrong and that he will not resign. His aides say he is going about business as usual.

A same-sex couple in California has won a federal court ruling that their adopted son's Louisiana birth certificate must bear the names of both adoptive fathers.

The facts are so clear that no trial is needed, U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey wrote.

"What a great Christmas present for these guys!" said Kenneth D. Upton Jr. who represented Oren Adar and Mickey Ray Smith of San Diego.

In his ruling Monday, Zainey said Louisiana's Office of Vital Records must give full faith and credit to the New York State court in which Adar and Smith adopted the boy, he ruled Monday. The office had refused to issue a birth certificate listing both as the boy's legal parents.

Upton, reached at home Saturday evening, said he hopes to get a birth certificate in the coming week but doesn't know whether the Louisiana Attorney General's Office — which is in charge, although a state health department attorney argued the case — will decide to appeal.

The attorney general's office will look into the matter next week, said Tammi Arender Herring, spokeswoman for Attorney General James "Buddy" Caldwell.

Upton, of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund Inc. of Dallas, said it is the fourth case of its kind that he knows of. Cases in Oklahoma, Virginia and Mississippi also were decided in the parents' favor — the Mississippi case decided at trial about a month ago, he said.

Kothari Law Firm, located in the metro Atlanta, Georgia area, announces the creation of the Atlanta Georgia Bankruptcy Blog.

This weblog focuses on legal analysis of bankruptcy and other financial matters.

"The purpose of this weblog is to provide a varied overview of relevant and topical bankruptcy issues. This weblog will discuss bankruptcy issues currently in the news, as well as providing analysis of personal bankruptcy issues. In addition, other financial issues will be discussed, such as the credit crisis, mortgage issues, and other topics," says Sundeep Kothari, Bankruptcy Attorney.

The weblog is located at www.atlantageorgiabankruptcy.wordpress.com.

Kothari Law Firm is a debt relief agency helping people file for bankruptcy protection under the Bankruptcy Code.

Germany has filed suit at the World Court asking Italy to stop its legal system from awarding damages to victims of Nazi war crimes.

The complaint, filed Tuesday in The Hague, follows a ruling by Italy's top criminal court ordering Berlin to pay euro1 million (US$1.4 million) in damages to nine relatives of victims of a June 1944 massacre in the Tuscan town of Civitella.

In the atrocity, German soldiers killed more than 200 civilians to avenge a deadly attack by partisans.

In its filing with the World Court, Germany argued that as a sovereign state it has immunity in Italian courts, and that any decision rendered in the Italian judiciary is unenforceable.

Germany, which says it has paid reparations for Nazi crimes under international treaties with Italy, rejected the ruling handed down by Italy's Court of Cassation two months ago.

German Foreign Ministry spokesman Jens Ploetner said seeking compensation for World War II crimes was "morally understandable but it is, in judicial terms, the wrong way to address this injustice, and so this ruling is not acceptable for us."

Compensation claims against Germany have been winding through the Italian judiciary since the late 1990s, when Luigi Ferrini sought restitution for his arrest and deportation to Germany in 1944 to work as a slave laborer in the Nazi armaments industry.

Germany fought the case, pleading immunity. Ferrini lost in two lower courts before the Court of Cassation overturned the previous decisions in 2004 and recognized Italian jurisdiction.

Federal prosecutors are urging an appeals court to get on with Rep. William Jefferson's corruption trial, saying his appeal to the Supreme Court does not have enough chance of success to justify further delays.

Jefferson. D-La., was indicted on bribery charges after agents found $90,000 in his freezer. He has pleaded not guilty and his lawyers argue that his trial should be delayed pending his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Jefferson argues that the charges are invalid because a grand jury got access to information about his actions as a member of Congress. That, Jefferson claims, runs afoul of a constitutional clause that shields members of Congress from civil or criminal action stemming from the performance of their legislative duties.

But in a brief filed this week in Richmond, Va., with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, prosecutor Mark Lytle said delaying the trial would cause "further prejudice," or harm, to the government's case against the nine-term congressman. The government brought the charges 18 months ago.

Jefferson, Lytle wrote, has not shown the required "reasonable probability" of success with the high court on the merits of his case.

In a ruling hailed by environmentalists, a federal appeals court on Tuesday reinstated one of President George W. Bush's clean air regulations while the Environmental Protection Agency makes court-mandated changes.

In July, the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out the Clean Air Interstate Rule, which required 28 mostly Eastern states to reduce smog-forming and soot-producing emissions that can travel long distances in the wind.

The court said the EPA overstepped its authority by instituting the rule, citing "more than several fatal flaws" in the regulation. However, a three-judge panel decided to reinstate the rule while the EPA develops a new clean air program.

Judge Judith W. Rogers said allowing the country to go without the protection of CAIR while the EPA fixes it "would sacrifice clear benefits to public health and the environment."

The judges did not give EPA a deadline to come up with new regulations, but warned the agency that this decision is not an "indefinite stay" of its July ruling.

The Environmental Protection Agency had predicted that the Clean Air Interstate Rule would prevent about 17,000 premature deaths a year by dramatically reducing sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions. In addition, the EPA said the rule would save up to $100 billion in health benefits, eliminate millions of lost work and school days and prevent tens of thousands of nonfatal heart attacks.