Jim Jefferies Death on 12/18/12

The obituary from the Greensboro News-Record, here, is:

GREENSBORO — James Henry Jeffries III, 78, died on December 18, 2012 at his home in Greensboro, North Carolina. 

Mr. Jeffries was a United States Marine Corps Korean War veteran and graduate of the University of Kentucky and the University of Kentucky, School of Law. Mr. Jeffries was a former prosecutor for the United States Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. and a retired Colonel in the United States Marine Corps Reserve. Following retirement from the Justice Department, Mr. Jeffries engaged in the private practice of law in Greensboro. 

Mr. Jeffries was preceded in death by his beloved wife Ruth Anne Jeffries and is survived by his brother Conrad A. Conrad of Scottsdale, Arizona, his daughter Anne Jeffries Reardon, his sons, James Henry Jeffries IV and John Harlan Jeffries, and his daughters-in-law Sonya Renee Lowe and Valerie Hall Jeffries. He was also the beloved "Paw Paw" of nine grandchildren: Lauren Anne Jeffries, Erin Elizabeth Jeffries, James Henry Jeffries V, Austin Matthew Jeffries, Tara Jean Jeffries, Daniel Boyd Jeffries, Kathryn Chelsea Reardon, John Augustus Reardon, and Rebecca Anne Reardon, all of Greensboro, North Carolina. He was the Pater Familias.
Services will be private. 

His family requests that any memorials in lieu of flowers be made in his name to the Marine Corps Wounded Warrior Regiment which can be contacted at wwrdonations@usmc.mil.
Online condolences may be offered at www.forbisanddick.com/

Boente to Serve as Interim U.S. Attorney for New Orleans (12/10/12)

Main Justice has an article on Dana Boete's appointment to head the troubled New Orleans USAO.  Elizabeth Murphy, Longtime DOJ Lawyer Dana Boente Tapped as Interim New Orleans U.S. Attorney (Main Justice 12/6/12), here.  Excerpts are:

Justice Department veteran Dana Boente will serve as the interim New Orleans U.S. Attorney following Jim Letten’s resignation today, announced Attorney General Eric Holder. 

Boente has been the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia since 2007. He was the acting U.S. Attorney in the Alexandria, Va., based district from 2008 to 2009. Before moving to the Virginia position, Boente served in the Justice Department’s Tax Division, where he began his DOJ career in 1984. He served as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the division from 2005 to 2007. From 2000 to 20005 he was a lawyer in the Eastern District of Virginia. For 16 years at the beginning of his career he served as a trial attorney in the Tax Division. 

“Dana Boente is a veteran federal prosecutor with a record over the past 28 years of distinguished service to the Department of Justice,” Holder said in a statement. “I am confident that he will lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office through this time of transition and ensure the office’s continued commitment to justice for the people of the Eastern District of Louisiana.” 

Letten announced his resignation this morning in the wake of an online commenting scandal that forced one of his prosecutors to resign and another to be demoted. The prosecutors were making anonymous and derogatory online comments on a news website about targets of federal investigations

Mort Caplin's Dedication to Lapsley Hamblen (12/4/12)

Mort Caplin gave this memoriam to Lapsley Hamblen on November 15 in the Center Courtroom of the U.S. Tax Court..  It was republished in Tax Notes and Tax Notes Today, 137 Tax Notes 1025 (Nov. 26, 2012) and 2012 TNT 227-8, respectively.   I further republish it here with the permission of Mort Caplin and Tax Analysts.

Copyright 2012 Mortimer M. Caplin.

All rights reserved.

* * * * *

Chief Judge Thornton, the judges of the U.S. Tax Court, Claudia Hamblen, family, and friends:

What a privilege it is to join in honoring our dear friend, Lapsley Walker Hamblen Jr. And what a joy to recall that, whenever we met, a new story or joke and a good laugh were sure to greet us.

Lapsley and I first met in 1950 at UVA law school -- he was entering his first year of law and I was a brand new law professor. We both had UVA college degrees, and I'd also received one from UVA Law. I was "the New Boy on the Block" -- fresh from Wall Street law practice to teach tax and corporate law, and courses in agency, partnership, and business law in general.

Lap enrolled in just about every course I had to offer, right up to his graduation in 1953 . He was a top student -- even earning one of my first "4.0's." His election to Order of the Coif confirmed all!

The 1950s -- the post WW II era--brought us an extraordinary group of students. Lap's 1953 class had many stars besides himself; John W. Warner, later U.S. senator from Va.; E. Barrett Prettyman Jr., holder of many major posts in the JFK administration; and then there was my future law partner, Douglas D. Drysdale, a leading member of Lapsley's class.