Georgia's biggest court system has warned that a 2010 Fulton County proposal that cuts $53 million from the judicial budget could force them to shut down the courthouse, jeopardize death penalty cases and slash as many as 1,000 jobs.

Fulton County's judicial leaders declared an "economic state of emergency" and warned Wednesday that the cuts, which amount to about a fourth of Fulton County's judicial budget, would lead to drastic changes at the Fulton County Jail, the sheriff's office along with prosecutors, judges and public defenders.

"This is not something you can adjust to," said Doris Downs, the county's chief superior court judge. "This is going to dismantle the justice system."

The proposed cuts, which were released last week, are part of a spending plan that would slash the county's funding by $148.2 million in 2010. Downs and other judicial leaders said the cuts came as a surprise to them and urged commissioners to rethink the spending plan before it plunges the legal system into a "crisis."

Fulton County Commission Chair John Eaves said the spending plan is still tentative and that commissioners will approve final changes in January. But he said that the judicial system will have to shoulder a portion of the cuts along with other county agencies.

A Michigan law firm has agreed to pay a $131,000 fine to resolve an investigation into donations to former Sen. John Edwards' 2004 presidential campaign.

The Federal Election Commission said Thursday it had reached an agreement with the law firm of Geoffrey Fieger, who once represented assisted suicide advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian, after the commission found probable cause that Fieger's firm violated campaign finance laws.

Fieger, a Democrat who lost a bid for Michigan governor in 1998 against Republican Gov. John Engler, has denied any wrongdoing.

Fieger and his law partner, Ven Johnson, were acquitted in 2008 of illegally funneling campaign money for Edwards' 2004 presidential race. Jurors said the government failed to prove the lawyer knew he was breaking the law.

Fieger's lawyer, Michael Dezsi, said the firm decided to pay the fine instead of continuing the litigation. "We felt confident that we would have prevailed as we did against the Justice Department. But for the amount we were able to negotiate the settlement, it simply just wasn't worth the litigation. We've spent years litigating this," he said.

Under the agreement, which was reached in October, the FEC said it found probable cause that the law firm made payments to 66 individuals to reimburse them for $131,000 in contributions to Edwards' presidential campaign. Under campaign finance laws, corporations are barred from making contributions to a candidate and donors are prohibited from contributing in the name of another person.

The commission voted to take no further action against Fieger or Johnson. Documents filed by the commission show that FEC commissioners were deadlocked over whether Fieger and Johnson "knowingly and willfully" violated campaign finance laws. Deszi said that finding could have led to fines of about $1 million.

Promising "you haven't seen the last of me," a 70-year-old disbarred lawyer convicted in a terrorism case surrendered to U.S. marshals Thursday to begin serving her prison term after a New York appeals court upheld her conviction.

A smiling Lynne Stewart walked with several dozen supporters to a collection of cameras on her way into U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Thursday, shaking a fist in the air to chants of "Free Lynne Stewart."

"It's very hard to feel downhearted today," she said. "I can take whatever they dish out. I am not going to back off ever."

Stewart said she would become a jailhouse lawyer to the extent her disbarment will allow, helping other inmates with their legal fights.

Stewart was ordered a day earlier to begin serving her two-year, four-month sentence. She was convicted in 2005 of charges that she let a Muslim extremist client convicted in a plot to blow up New York City landmarks communicate with followers. She was sentenced in 2006.

The 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan on Tuesday upheld the conviction and rejected a request just minutes before she entered the courthouse Thursday to further delay her incarceration. She had been free on bail pending appeal.

As soon as she heard her last chance to stay free was taken away, she announced to the crowd: "OK. We're going to prison folks."

The appeals court had also directed Stewart's sentencing judge to consider whether she should receive a harsher sentence after determining whether she lied to the jury during her trial.

On an Internet site, 15-year-old Alyssa Bustamante listed her hobbies as "killing people" and "cutting." It may have sounded like a teenage exaggeration, but authorities say she fulfilled her words.

Even as new details emerge about the teenager charged with killing 9-year-old Elizabeth Olten, many facts about the crime continued to be kept secret Thursday — and may never be released by authorities unless Bustamante goes to trial for murder.

Bustamante, who had been in juvenile custody since leading police to Elizabeth's body Oct. 23, was certified Wednesday as an adult and indicted on charges of first-degree murder and armed criminal action. She is accused of strangling Elizabeth, cutting her throat and stabbing her.

Online court records showed Thursday that a public defender assigned to represent Bustamante filed a motion seeking to have her placed in a state hospital for immediate mental health treatment.

The Senate on Thursday confirmed U.S. District Judge David Hamilton for the Chicago-based federal appeals court, approving a nominee targeted by conservatives as a liberal activist.

Hamilton was approved on a 59-39 vote and became the eighth of President Barack Obama's judicial nominees to win confirmation. He is the third confirmed for a U.S. appeals court, which is usually the last stop for federal court cases.

Republican senators — backed by their conservative allies outside Congress — had blocked a vote for five months until Democrats overcame a filibuster last Tuesday with a 70-29 vote.

The failure to stop the confirmation showed that Republicans lack the clout to block Obama's judicial nominees as the president remakes the federal judiciary following eight years of George W. Bush's mostly conservative choices for the bench.

Obama has been much slower than Bush in sending the Senate nominees to fill court vacancies. However, administration officials have said they are concentrating on the number of Senate confirmations. And they expect that number to soon equal the court confirmations in Bush's first year.

Republicans attacked Hamilton's rulings and his work in the distant past for two liberal organizations: the American Civil Liberties Union in Indiana; and as a fundraiser over two months for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, the troubled group that is under fire from Republicans on Capitol Hill.

New York's top court on Thursday rejected a Christian legal group's challenge to some government benefits provided to gay couples legally married elsewhere and now living in New York.

The court rejected an argument that same-sex marriage was akin to incest and polygamy but avoided declaring that gay couples are entitled to all the rights of other married couples.

In a 4-3 decision on the narrow question of benefits, the Court of Appeals did not address whether the state must recognize same-sex marriage but encouraged the Legislature to settle the issue. The case was pushed by the Alliance Defense Fund of Scottsdale, Ariz.

A law to allow same-sex marriage in New York is hung up in the state Senate but could come to a vote before the end of the year. One judge warned that failing to address the larger question of recognizing same-sex marriages will create a problem.

"The effect of the majority's rationale in affirming these orders will be to permit an unworkable pattern of conflicting executive and administrative directives ... (at the) individual discretion of each agency head," Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick warned in an otherwise concurring opinion.

Congressional budget crunchers Thursday said the Democrats' latest health care plan would hold down federal red ink for at least a 20-year stretch, an assessment that boosted the bill's advocates as the Senate moved gingerly toward a historic debate.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that Majority Leader Harry Reid's 10-year, $848-billion bill would produce a net reduction of $130 billion in federal deficits in its first decade. Perhaps more significantly, the legislation would continue to give back over the next 10 years and beyond, the budget umpires said, because "added revenues and costs savings would probably be greater" than the cost of covering uninsured Americans.

The budget office put a big asterisk on its forecast, using words like "imprecision" and "uncertainty" to describe the long-range projection. It noted that, overall, health care spending remains on an unsustainable path.

However, the bill would not make matters any worse, and maybe even a little better.

With President Barack Obama pledging to tamp down ruinous health care costs, Democrats took the new CBO estimates to the bank, while skipping over the caveats. Preparing for a noontime rally with supporters, Reid, D-Nev., said the legislation would "save lives, save money and save Medicare."

The CBO said Reid's bill would extend coverage to 94 percent of eligible Americans, after subsidies to make premiums more affordable start flowing in 2014. That's one year later than in the House Democratic bill — and well into the next presidential term. Postponing the subsidies by one year allowed Reid to offer somewhat more generous assistance to defray the cost of insurance premiums.