"A horrible embarrassment to the profession"

The Washington Post writes here on the funny thing that might happen because court-appointed lawyers in Virginia are too slack to apply for all that cap-waiver money: it will disappear.

It says in part:

"The General Assembly established the fund so Virginia could shed its label as the country's lowest-paying state for criminal defense lawyers. In the eight months since the fund was established, defense lawyers statewide have claimed about $640,000, or 8 percent, of the money.

The lack of interest is baffling defense advocates, who argued for decades that the money was needed to ensure that poor defendants get the same quality defense as those who can afford a lawyer."

More books

Last weekend, at the in-laws, I read The Hills of Tuscany by Ferenc Mate, an easy and fun book, and, I must confess, a recent offering from Maeve Binchy. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, when you go to the in-laws, you read the books they have.

In the mail this week came The Other Venice: Secrets of the City by Predrag Matvejevic, a sort of mystical work with great photographs, and, inevitably, Chow Venice: Savoring the Food and Wine of La Serenissima, Second Edition.

From the library today, Dana got for me Jonathan Alter's The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope and some other book I haven't looked at yet.

On lawyer poets, including Virginia's own

This article is about lawyers who are poets.

Virginia had a notable one in Armistead C. Gordon, who was among other things a president of The VBA. You can download free from Google Books some of his work, including this book and this book.

Cousin Mara in Africa, Mark II in soap opera

My cousin Mara, daughter of Dad's sister Lois and step-daughter of Bristol coal lawyer Tim Lowe, has this blog of her experience in Africa, working at a pediatric HIV clinic.

Unrelated to this, MML's son Mark II has landed a role in One Life to Live.