Publisher's Notebook

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was in Richmond on Friday. And he took back a souvenir he said he’d never forget.

Scalia, recently named Orator in Residence at the University of Richmond, gave a talk at UR in the afternoon, then he attended the annual Red Mass at St. Benedict Church. The Red Mass, a tradition dating back to 1245 in Europe, is an annual religious service for judges, lawyers, law professors and law students. It gets its name from the bright red vestments worn by the priests for the occasion.

After the service, Scalia was the speaker and guest of honor at a dinner hosted by the St. Thomas More Society, the Catholic lawyers group based in Richmond.

In introducing Scalia, UR law professor Kevin Walsh, who clerked for Scalia, noted that the justice cited More, as depicted in the play “A Man for All Seasons,” as his favorite figure in literature. And Scalia discussed More in his talk. More was the chancellor to King Henry VIII, and he refused to capitulate to Henry when he wanted to dump his wife, Catherine of Aragon. Only the pope can grant that wish, More said, even though the papacy at the time was corrupt. Henry didn’t like that answer, and More was beheaded.

After the speech, Society President Eric Gregory and Steve Reardon presented Scalia with a unique gift – a hat just like the one worn by More in the famous Hans Holbein portrait (Take a look at the picture.) Reardon had scoured Richmond and found a hatmaker who could fill the bill.

“I hope you don’t have one like it already,” Gregory said.

Scalia, clearly tickled by his new lid, said no, adding that he’d wear it in an academic procession.

John Charles Thomas recently retired from the Supreme Court of Virginia.

Wait a minute. Thomas hasn’t been on the court since 1989, you say.

That’s true. In 1983, at age 32, Thomas became the first African-American to sit on the court. He resigned in 1989 due to a brain tumor, and after receiving treatment, rejoined Hunton & Williams, where he is a senior partner.

But apparently one can’t formally retire from the court until the age of 60, which Thomas reached in September. He said that now he actually could be recalled, as a retired justice, to sit on a panel.

In the meantime, he’ll stay busy with his work at Hunton – and at Juridical Solutions. He recently signed on as a senior professional with that mediation company.

The General Assembly won’t return to Richmond until January, but the annual exercise in minting new specialty license plates is in gear already.

Virginia must have more specialty/vanity tags than just about any other state in the country. And for members of the General Assembly, specialty plates must be a constituent service bonanza, or an annoyance. Or both.

Here’s how it works: A well-meaning group with an interest, cause or passion wants a specialty license plate to share that enthusiasm with the world. A friendly legislator introduces a bill to authorize that plate. The measure has to pass the Assembly, and once it’s actually approved, 350 people have to submit a prepaid application before it will be produced. If all that happens, you’ll be seeing the new plate on cars not long thereafter.

A lot of plates never make it. A lot do. For example, you can get a Jimmy Buffett parrothead plate, plates for a variety of Washington-area sports teams or tags for a number of colleges.

If you like politics on your car’s tag, you can “Choose Life” or “Trust Women/Respect Choice.” You can get a Confederate heritage license plate. Or “Tobacco Heritage,” which is much more genteel than a bumper sticker that reads, “I smoke and I vote.”

There are a few license tag bills already in the hopper for the 2011 Assembly, carried over from this year. These include plates for backers of Relay for Life and Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Del. Richard P. Bell, R-Staunton, with House Bill 1408, is trying again to get the national motto, “In God We Trust,” on a license plate.

Here’s something new.

Del. John O’Bannon, R-Henrico, has introduced House Bill 1418, which would create a plate with a recreation of the famous “Don’t Tread on Me” flag from revolutionary times. The bill doesn’t say it, but this plate is a nod to the Tea Party movement, which has been using the snake flag, also known as the Gadsden flag, as one of its rallying symbols.

While the Virginia snake-flag plate effort appears to be the first, Tea Party conservatives aren’t stopping in Virginia. The Dallas News reported that Texas is also mulling a “Don’t Tread on Me” tag.

Once Virginia and Texas started the movement, a legislator in Nevada jumped on board the bandwagon, according to the Las Vegas Sun. That leaves 47 states to be heard from.

Considering that specialty plates require payment of an additional fee, more than one left-leaning blogger has noted there’s a small irony at work here: Tea Party members never have seemed so willing to write the government a check.

Yesterday – Veterans Day – I went to the Richmond airport to pick up a colleague.

Since you can’t go through security, at RIC you wait in a central area between the two concourses. I parked myself in front of Concourse B, where I noticed two women and a little girl also waiting. The apparent mother of the little girl held balloons, one of them a large American flag. The other woman, a small blonde, had on what can best be described as cocktail attire, a Little Black Dress. She looked at her watch, talked to her older sister (I’m assuming here), looked at her watch again.

The plane from Atlanta was 11 minutes late. But after a while, travelers started to make their way to the center of the airport. The two women stood up, and the blonde was all excited motion. She smoothed her hair. She adjusted her dress. She wiped her glasses. She smoothed her hair again. From the corner of my eye, I could see her standing on her toes, craning for a view.

She had to wait as people she had no interest in flowed past, caught up in their own stories. A businessman in a suit shook hands with the suit who greeted him. Two young women gave each other a quick embrace then chatted about where to eat. Others, those without a welcoming party, took the turn to head toward baggage claim.

Then down the concourse came a tall man in Army fatigues. He was searching for a face. He saw her and broke into a run. So did she. They met and shared a tight movie-moment hug. She didn’t make a sound, but her shoulders shuddered in a silent cry of happiness and relief.

By instinct, the crowd formed a protective half-circle around them. We all were smiling.

The moment finally melted them back to the airport. They collected the balloons, the sister, the girl, his gear. They were on their way.

My colleague appeared. Her first question was, “Did a tall man with a mustache and Army fatigues come through here?”

Funny you should ask, I said. We exchanged the two halves of the tale. On the Atlanta flight, she had overheard the man’s story. He was a soldier finishing a year-long tour of duty in Afghanistan. He had been traveling for three straight days when he made it to Atlanta, barely catching the flight to Richmond.

When he got on the plane, one of the men in first class said, “Here, you take this seat,” and swapped with the soldier. In the few minutes before the airplane doors closed, he called his wife – the blonde in the black dress. My colleague had tried not to eavesdrop, but not too hard. The soldier said, “I told you when I left I’d come back to you.” And he kept his word.

We made our way down the escalator to the airport exit, and we saw the couple talking with a few other soldiers. We passed, and I stopped to speak to a man I had never met. “Welcome home,” I said.

I just wish I had added, “Thank you.”

Trend Alert: Here’s one you may not have seen yet, but odds are, it will make its way into your life soon.

There is a movement, mostly spurred by social media such as Twitter, to start referring to the Metropolitan DC area as “the DMV” (as in District/Maryland/Virginia).

What’s wrong with “Nation’s Capital” or “Metro DC,” you ask? When you’re limited to 140 characters a post, those titles take up much-needed room.

The Washington Post first flagged the development with an article back in July. The Post writer’s take was generally positive, likening the need for a cool regional nickname along the lines of “H-town” for Houston, or “the 612″ for Minneapolis (taken from the area code) or “the ‘nati” for Cincinnati. OK, Cincy needs to work on this.

TBD, the TV station/news website covering the Metro DC area (I’m not succumbing yet), notes that “the DMV” has been pretty controversial. TBD has solicited comment from Twitter users with alternate hashtags, #dmv and #nodmv.

The “no” votes are winning. Reasons for the thumbs-down:

One guy tweeted, “@TBD #nodmv, mostly because I live in #NoVA and want nothing to do with Maryland. #EffMD”

Another woman said, “@TBD No DMV. Don’t associate my favorite city with the most god-awful place on earth: the Department of Motor Vehicles.”

That sounds pretty reasonable.

Richmond lawyer Andy Reinhardt was in Miami last week.

But it was hardly for a vacation. Reinhardt (right) is the new president of the Workers’ Injury Law and Advocacy Group, known as WILG (pronounced will-ig). The group held its national conference in South Florida Nov. 12-13.

WILG is a national bar group for workers’ compensation attorneys. Founded in 1995, it now has about 800 members in all 50 states.

Its mission, Reinhardt said, is simple: To help injured workers and to advocate on their behalf.

Although workers’ comp tends to be a state-oriented system across the country, WILG leaders have found themselves appearing before Congress recently, he said, seeking to educate legislators about their mission.

Reinhardt said he expects to be on the road to DC during his one-year term, and to appear before state legislatures to argue and lobby for and against legislation. Other travel will take him to meet with WILG members and groups across the country. He said he already has his first flight booked, heading to Denver for a meeting of trial-lawyer association presidents later this month.

The group also hosts CLE for its members and maintains a listserv. Reinhardt said that WILG members often are active in the workers’ comp section of the American Association for Justice, the national plaintiffs’ bar, and in state groups such as the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association.

But the leaders in comp work opted to start their own group 15 years ago, and WILG is, he said, “an organization whose time has come.”

Reinhardt said that he had heard that it takes about 10 years for a group like this to take off, and WILG now “has crossed that threshold.”

The group hired a new executive director, Jennifer Comer, in January and started a new website this year (www.WILG.org).

Coming from a small firm and knowing what it will take to lead an up-and-coming group this year, Reinhardt hailed the strong support of his law partner, Stephen Harper, and his “patient and loving” wife of 24 years, Monet.

“If you print that kind of thing, I’d like to thank them,” he said. Sometimes we do.