Hasta La Gadget!

Paul McCartney went through a rift with streaming services, but the former Beatle has been always been keen to keep his albums available on iTunes. Now, Sir Paul is following a growing trend for releases and reissues: apps. Five of McCartney’s…

Today begins the massive stream of Avengers previews, beginning with an image of Ultron himself. This preview is of the flat, image kind, showing off Ultron as a terrifying Iron Man villain-looking fellow. Of course he’s powerful enough to take on the whole of the Avengers, so there’s a bit more to learn. Who is Ultron? He’s a robot. Better … Continue reading

This has been a long time time and it has finally happened. The Senate today passed a bill which legalizes phone unlocking, the decision would have been aided by a favorable House vote this spring on a companion bill. Formally called The Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act tabled by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) brings back the rule which allows customers to unlock their mobile phones so that they can be used on any other network.

Even though a provision in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act lapsed which allowed unlocking lapsed last year carriers in the country had agreed to adopt clearing unlocking policies in the absence of a concrete law. President Barack Obama had already come out in support of this policy.

This bill is actually quite similar to the one passed by the House back in February. Leahy says that he will coordinate with the author of that bill, Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), to make sure that the Senate’s version is approved quickly and signed by President Obama.

The phone unlocking bill doesn’t permanently legalize phone unlocking but the Library of Congress now has to put an exemption in place and decide whether to extend it or not when the bill is due to renewal. The rule itself has been modified slightly.

It removes the ban on bulk unlocking, allows users to unlock a phone themselves or use a third party such as technician or a company to do it for them. Since unlocking requires a bit of technical knowledge this modification will no doubt be appreciated by consumer groups.

Phone Unlocking Bill Passed By The Senate

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Okay, show of hands. How many readers have actually sat inside a courtroom and watched a trial? Having been assigned to cover countless high-profile trials over the years, I have to admit I relish it.

I love going to courthouses with their stately facades and imposing corridors. And inside it’s like watching a big vat of human soup. We all get stirred up together in a courthouse. The poor, the middle-class, the rich. People seeking justice, people in big trouble with the law, people whose families are falling apart. The process is fascinating to watch.

Inside courtrooms where the most-watched trials take place there is a group of unsung regulars that I have never written about – professional courtroom artists. Whenever I can I try to get a seat next to one of them. Watching them work is a treat.

Cameras aren’t always allowed in court (especially in federal court) and so the artist is there as a front row eyewitness to capture the scene, those special moments that can be shown on television or in print to give the public a real feel for what it was like in the room.

Elizabeth Williams is one of these artists and she has just accomplished something remarkable. After a nine-year effort she has brought together the art work of five of the nation’s most experienced courtroom artists in the book, The Illustrated Courtroom – Fifty Years of Court Room Art. It is a delicious retrospective for court aficionados who can’t get enough of headliner trials.

The vast collection of iconic art is punctuated by captivating personal stories from all five artists: Howard Brodie, Richard Tomlinson, Bill Robles, Aggy Kenny and, of course, Williams herself. The riveting text is by co-author Sue Russell.

The book begins with the late Brodie’s intricate rendering of the courtroom in which Jack Ruby was found guilty of murdering presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in 1964. Also included is a sketch of Ruby as he heard the verdict.

“Just before the panel brought in a death sentence, Ruby’s Adam’s apple quivered and he gulped,” Brodie wrote on the bottom of that day’s drawing. Brodie recalled the judge sat on an inflated rubber-doughnut cushion and, “Decreed that only those within the rail could smoke, denying newsmen and spectators the privilege.”

From that time in a Dallas courtroom half a century ago the artwork flows like the pages of a legal history book. Among the many other Brodie accomplishments: capturing the action at the Watergate cover-up trial, the Patty Hearst case and scores of others.

Richard Tomlinson, also now deceased, was there to see radical Abbie Hoffman on trial for selling cocaine. The artist describes how his long held philosophy, “To approach each subject as if it is the only chance I’ll ever have to draw them, because it just might be,” came in handy during that 1973 trial. Hoffman skipped bail, changed his name and appearance and didn’t re-surface until 1980.

Tomlinson’s bold drawings of David Berkowitz (aka the “Son of Sam”) are powerful, as was his portrait of Mark David Chapman (John Lennon’s killer) and he spent two full years drawing participants in the Black Panther 21 case, among many others.

“Now I’m glad the book took nine years,” Williams told me on the phone. “Because if I’d started it later Howard and Richard would have been gone and we would have had no recollections from them.”

Aggie Kenny’s water-colored sketches are riveting. Among her included works are scenes from the trials of Iran-Contra defendants like John Poindexter and Oliver North.

“Strange details sometimes stick with you and I was very aware of Ollie’s mother wearing a prim bright-yellow hat,” Kenny recalls.

Also in the book, Kenny’s drawings from inside the U.S. Supreme Court, John Chambers the “Preppie Murderer,” Sydney Biddle Barrows aka “The Mayflower Madam” (another who favored prim hats) and Jerry Sandusky. Her 1974 portrait of James Earl Ray is shocking in his nonchalance as he faced charges of assassinating Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Drawing (Ray) in a makeshift courtroom set up in a penitentiary was a first for me,” Kenny says. “I felt as if I was drawing an infamous felon in a school cafeteria.” Kenny reveals that another courtroom artist there that day married Ray the next year.

Much of the book highlights the work of the talented and prolific Bill Robles, considered to be today’s dean of courtroom artists. Based in Los Angeles, he has covered trials for CBS news for more than 40 years and remembers his first assignment, the 1970 murder case against Charles Manson and his followers, as if it were yesterday.

Robles’ iconic drawing and insider story of how Manson came to display to the jury a newspaper headline that read, “Manson Guilty Nixon Declares” and nearly caused a mistrial is not to be missed. Robles rendition of the moment Manson grabbed a pencil and leapt to attack the judge graces the book’s front cover.

Robles went on to famously capture for posterity the trials of Roman Polanski, John DeLorean, Timothy McVeigh, OJ Simpson, Michael Jackson and too many others to mention here.

Included in Williams’ work are drawings from several dirty money cases including the infamous Bernard Madoff’s. Williams was the only artist to render the moment Madoff was led away in handcuffs by federal marshals and it was seen worldwide. Her work from several mob trials are also in the book along with her personal recollections of each (John Gotti once stood over her and asked in a menacing tone why her drawing of him “wasn’t smiling”) and give the reader a real feel for the pressures on a courtroom artist.

As the verdict neared at the Martha Stewart trial Williams recalls, “The TV networks had their producers in the courtroom with red and black squares of paper they could hold up (on the courthouse steps) to indicate guilty or not guilty.” All correspondents had to do was glance up from their camera position to see the signal and instantly report out the news. The artwork was expected to be finished immediately.

For me this book was a great trip down memory lane and it reminded me what a service these special artists do for the rest of us. They take us inside courtrooms where many have never been.

Diane Dimond may be reached via Diane@DianeDimond.com or her website: www.DianeDimond.com. She is active on Facebook and Twitter at @DiDimond.

This is the story of Bob and Gail Phillips, a North Carolina couple who, after 61 years together, love each other as much as they ever have.

To celebrate their 61st anniversary on June 27, Bob wrote a love note to his wife. Instead of leaving the note for her to stumble upon in private, he sent it to the Charlotte Observer, which published it for the world to see.

It has since gone viral — and for good reason. Grab your tissues, folks; this would wrench a tear from the Tin Man, and he doesn’t even have a heart:

Dear Gail,

I look at newspaper pictures of new brides every Sunday. I’m searching. I want to see if there is now or ever will be another bride as lovely as you. Been doing that since June 27, 1953.

Actually, I already know the answer. There is not – and never will be to me – your equal in loveliness. On our wedding day you were the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. The delightful truth is that you still are.

Happy anniversary, sweetheart. You’ve made me and you keep me the happiest and most grateful husband any bride could ever know. I’d gladly welcome another 61 years of marriage with you. Beyond that I pray we will spend eternity together.

All my love, Bob

In an interview with WBTV, Bob, 87, admitted, with a laugh, that his marriage proposal to Gail, 79, wasn’t particularly romantic. “I had taken her home and before she got out of the car, I said ‘Gail will you marry me?’ That was it.”

She said yes. They married on June 27, 1953, and haven’t looked back.

Bob told the Charlotte Observer the two celebrated their 60th anniversary last year by taking a nap. They had ruled out more adventurous activities like whitewater rafting and bungee jumping. “That’s what we’ll do again this year,” he added.

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