Publisher's Notebook

The justices of the United States Supreme Court apparently don’t know much about how today’s modern technology works.

Lawyers USA had the skinny this past week, in a blog post that has gone viral. Check it out here.

Kimberly Atkins, our colleague in the District, writes “DC Dicta,” a blog dedicated to following the Supreme Court, Congress, just about anything in Washington that affects the legal profession. She routinely attends proceedings at the high court.

On Monday, she reported on arguments in City of Ontario v. Quon, a case about whether police officers have an expectation of privacy in personal text messages (some of them sexually explicit) sent on pagers issued by the city.

The court’s tech deficit became apparent about halfway through arguments. The first clue: Chief Justice John G. Roberts asked, what is the difference “between e-mail and a pager?”

Other justices were similarly flummoxed, asking, among other things, if you could get a text message while sending one and if cops could print out the text messages.

Or as Justice Antonin Scalia put it, “Could [the officer] print these spicy little conversations and send them to his buddies?”

In fairness to the court, Kim also reported that one of the lawyers did no better. He got wrapped around the axle when asked whether the texts could be deleted permanently or not by the wireless carrier, ultimately conceding he didn’t know the answer.

One hopes they all – justices and lawyers combined – get it figured out before an opinion is handed down.

What are they thinking?

Another week, another person charged with having drugs while coming to court for a different offense.

Earlier this month, we reported on a guy in Suffolk who emptied his pockets to go through a metal detector at the Suffolk courthouse. Along with stuff like change, keys and gum was a bag of dope, allegedly.

Fast forward two weeks, move up the map to Richmond. According to a WTVR.COM report, a 21-year-old woman showed up in Richmond traffic court last Friday. During a routine pat-down, the officer allegedly found, yep, some marijuana.

She was charged with misdemeanor possession and told to return to face the music April 26.

The Richmond woman is only 21; the guy in Suffolk is 19. What are they teaching in school these days?

Richmond Sheriff C.T. Woody Jr. said, “This is an example of how drugs inevitably affect a person’s ability to make rational decisions.” Maybe he has a point.

The Virginia Lawyers Weekly editorial team brought home two company-wide editorial awards from the Dolan Media Editorial and Circulation Summit held last week in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Dolan Media Company conducts the Samuel B. Spencer Journalism Awards each year, gathering nominations from its 18 business units publishing 60-some print titles and numerous websites.

The Virginia team won third place in headline writing for a March 2009 story, “Oval and Out: OBX can’t be trademarked.” The piece was a case story about a man’s failed effort to trademark the popular “OBX” tag that appears in oval stickers on cars everywhere on the East Coast. In the words of the headline, he was “oval and out.”

And we brought home the bronze in the creativity category for “The VLW Quick 10,” our popular online feature that debuted last June. “Quick 10″ lists compiled by our editors have included judges’ nicknames, made-up “new lawyer law firms,” Virginia cases about food, lawyer license plates, reasons to strike jurors that stood up and Christmas carols for lawyers, among others. The full name of the award is the “Justice Potter Stewart Freestyle Creativity Award,” named for the late Supreme Court justice who knew pornography “when he saw it.” The Dolan Media judges took the same approach to creativity.

Our colleagues at St. Louis-based Missouri Lawyers Media, publishers of seven titles including Missouri Lawyers Weekly, took home the competition’s top prize as “Best in Show.”

Today, April 13, is Thomas Jefferson’s birthday. Tom would be 267 if he were here to blow out the candles on his cake.

As an alternative way to celebrate his day, every year the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression hands out its “Muzzle” awards. You wouldn’t actually want to win one of these – they are given to entities that try to squelch free speech and expression. In other words, the center is trying to tell a cautionary tale.

This year all of the 10 “honorees” are all government or school officials.

For example, the Alabama ABC Board banned the sale of Cycles Gladiator, a California wine, because the bottle displayed “a person posed in an immoral or sensuous manner.” Say what? The label contained a replica of a 1895 French poster of a nude nymph with a flying bicycle.

Out in Las Vegas, the cops tried to get rid of street performers along the strip. Didn’t want them to stay in Vegas, apparently.

In Oklahoma, government officials denied a license plate that stated “IM GAY,” on the grounds that was “offensive to the general public.”

And closer to home, the Virginia Department of Corrections won a Muzzle for denying an inmate a CD containing a Christian sermon. The department has since revised a policy to allow inmates to order religious CDs, effective June 1.

You get the idea. The Associated Press has the full story here.

In the meantime, here’s a toast to Mr. Jefferson. Feel free to use a bottle of wine with a nymph on the label.

Take a drive from Northern Virginia to Richmond and while you’re in Prince William County, you’ll no doubt see the brown sign that reads, “Weems-Botts Museum, Exit 152A.”

Not much detail there, but the Weems-Botts Museum is a project maintained by Historic Dumfries Virginia Inc., a group dedicated to preserving the history of Virginia’s oldest chartered town. In 1749, Dumfries was the first of seven chartered towns approved by the General Assembly; it was named after Dumfries, Scotland.

The museum is in a house built more than 250 years ago and named for two of its owners.

One of the leading locals there in the late 18th century was Rev. Mason Locke Weems, a/k/a Parson Weems. The good parson came to Virginia from Maryland and served in various churches, including Pohick Church in Lorton, where George Washington sometimes worshiped. In fact, George became the parson’s meal ticket: In 1800 Weems published “Life of Washington,” an 80-page pamphlet purporting to tell the first president’s biography. It was Weems who introduced the stories of the chopped-down cherry tree (“I cannot tell a lie…”) and Washington’s throwing a rock across the river. Needless to say this stuff was popular, if mostly spin.

Weems sold the house to a lawyer, Benjamin Botts, in 1802. He used the building as his law office. Botts is probably best known as a member of the defense team representing Aaron Burr, who was tried for treason in 1807 on a charge of plotting with the Spanish to peel off the western part of the new nation. The trial, held in federal court in Richmond and presided over by Chief Justice John Marshall, ended in an acquittal.

Botts and his wife Jane were among the victims of the Dec. 26, 1811, theater fire in Richmond that decimated Virginia society; the governor, George William Smith, was among those who perished.

If you go: Weems-Botts Museum, Dumfries. Take Exit 152A off of Interstate 95. Open Tuesday-Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission (includes guided tour): $4 for adults; seniors and children $2.50. Children under 6 free. Call (703) 221-2218 for any additional details. (Photo borrowed with appreciation from a Weems family site on RootsWeb).

Hoagy Carmichael was one of America’s great songwriters of the 20th century. He penned “Stardust,” “Georgia on My Mind” and “Heart and Soul,” just to name a few.

But Carmichael (right) also was a guy who earned a law degree from the Indiana University law school in 1926. He got a job with a law firm in Miami, but failed the Florida bar exam. He moved back to the Hoosier State and took a job with a firm there. He took and passed the Indiana bar, but he spent a lot of time on music.

So much time that he got fired, giving him a chance to be a full-time songwriter. His career took off in the early 1930s after Louis Armstrong and others started recording his songs. Bing Crosby gets credit for the first recording of “Stardust” in 1931.

Thanks to Dawn Chase of the Virginia State Bar for the tip.

The College of William & Mary’s long nightmare of having no mascot came to an end today.

The Tribe’s new mascot is…the griffin. It’s a critter that’s half eagle and half lion. Symbolizes boldness and courage, according to the word on the street.

W&M President Taylor Reveley filmed a video for YouTube that was included in the college’s Web site announcement.

Reveley, who unveiled the new mascot at a ceremony this afternoon, said, “With its arrival, we now have a mascot that unites strength with intelligence, recalls our royal origins, and speaks to our deep roots in American history.” Whew! No pressure on you, birdie-lion boy.

Personally, I voted for the phoenix in an online preference poll, but the griffin is fine. How this mythical creature meshes with the Native Americanesque “Tribe” remains a mystery, though.

Still, it could have been worse. As noted in an earlier post in this notebook, the contenders included a pug-ugly pug and a king and queen combo with a king who looked a bit like a refugee from a burger commercial.

Part of Reveley’s mission was to find something “that looks good on a T-shirt.” The griffin fills the bill. One imagines that the next order of business will be naming said mascot, and another online poll and round of exuberant expectation awaits.

Note to W&M: Just don’t call him “Merv.”

Lawyer-comedian Bob Battle has a great routine in which he recounts dumb lines that cops have heard after stopping a suspected drunken driver. Here’s one:

Cop: May I see your license and registration?
Driver: Sure. Here, hold my beer.

This item is the equivalent of “Here, hold my stash.”

According to the Suffolk News-Herald, last Friday a guy was headed into the Suffolk courthouse to face the music for a March arrest on drug possession charges.

Authorities at the courthouse, of course, search everyone and all comers must pass through metal detectors.

Guy prepares to pass through, and empties his pockets, including, allegedly, a bag of marijuana. Needless to say the guards on duty got really interested really fast.

The upshot was the first case has been continued until May, and the guy will be arraigned on a second possession charge Wednesday.

The Central Virginia Legal Aid Society held a tribute luncheon for outgoing executive director Henry McLaughlin yesterday.

McLaughlin fought the good fight for 32 years, serving as the leader of CVLAS since 1981. He is leaving to open a private practice in Richmond dedicated to helping people fight foreclosure.

Former first lady Anne Holton, herself a former legal aider, led a parade of speakers who praised McLaughlin and his work. Tom Slater, who will become president of the CVLAS board later this year, noted that McLaughlin spent his career “helping people achieve a better life.”

As an aside, it’s worth adding McLaughlin was one of Virginia Lawyers Weekly’s “Leaders in the Law” last fall; in fact, the Leaders Class of 2009 selected him as the “Leader of the Year.”

When given the chance to make remarks himself, McLaughlin simply gave a heartfelt thanks to everyone and chose instead to talk about the future of CVLAS, introducing Steve Dickinson, who will take over as executive director.

And perhaps true to form, on his last day at CVLAS, McLaughlin no doubt left the luncheon and went to his office to get back to work: Marty Wegbreit, senior managing attorney, noted that McLaughlin had a writ panel argument at 4:00 p.m. yesterday in which he would be “trying to save another homeowner from foreclosure.”

Hats off, sir.