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COMMANDING OFFICER FIRED! Criminal Charges Coming?!

As I said yesterday, this was a perfectly foreseeable PR catastrophe for the Navy. It’s one thing to reprimand Capt. Brett Crozier for circulating his letter to the Navy begging for help to quarantine sick sailors onshore.It’s another to humiliate him by relieving him of command. Yesterday the acting Secretary of the Navy complained that the letter created “a little bit of a panic on the ship.” Is that right? I’m not getting a strong vibe from these clips of Crozier’s send-off yesterday that his crew is relieved to see the panic-monger go. Watch this video of the send...

(ABOVE: Am I the only one who's curious how the Washington Post uncovered so many women who made 40-year-old allegations against Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore while uncovering none who made one-year-old allegations against Democratic U.S. Senator Bob Menendez?) Stop me if you've heard this one before. Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore walked into a brothel ... ... and then he walked right back out. That's the account I got from Bill Staehle, a lawyer living in Asbury Park who served in Vietnam with Moore in the early 1970s. Staehle, who is now 70, was a captain in...

KANSAS CITY, Kan. - A Kansas City, Kansas, police captain has died following a shooting early Tuesday afternoon, according to multiple sources. Chief Terry Zeigler originally tweeted that an officer had been shot at 22nd and Haskell.

Despite beginning by punching out Adolf Hitler, Captain America has stayed relatively apolitical. He’s a soldier, doing what is ordered, sometimes rebelling against those orders when they are from a voice that is corrupt, but the actual political nuance has not bothered the character as much. But that was Steve Rogers. from the new Sam Wilson: Captain America #1. When the ex-Falcon has been thinking. And possibly watching last night’s Democrat debate. And doesn’t want to just be a tool anymore...Basically what if Bernie Sanders was Captain America?

An airline captain has reportedly died at the controls despite a flight attendant with medical training trying to revive him. In a recording, the first officer is heard radioing in the emergency to ground control explaining that the captain has become 'incapacitated.' American Airlines flight 550 was en-route to Boston from Phoenix earlier this morning when the pilot was taken ill at the controls. An air stewardess - apparently a former nurse - fought to save his life but to no avail.

Clint Eastwood To Make Film about Capt. Sully Sullenberger By Stephen Pope / Published: Jun 04, 2015 Warner Bros. Pictures announced on Tuesday that the life story of Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger is coming to the big screen in a yet-to-be named motion picture that will be directed by none other than Clint Eastwood. The film will be adapted from Sully's book, "Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters," co-written with Jeffery Zaslow.

Video at link To create a real American hero, there's no need to spend millions on costumes, CGI effects and stunts. Apparently all it takes is a little US Army training and a faded T-shirt. When off-duty Army Captain Steve Voglezon put on his red "Captain America" T-shirt on Sunday, he surely had no idea it would be even more apropos than the uniform he wears most other days. When Voglezon came upon the scene of a fiery head-on collision on a North Carolina road, he quickly sprung into action, rescuing two people trapped inside one of the crashed cars,...

Andreas Lubitz: Germanwings flight's last minutes revealed in chilling black box transcript 29 March 2015 By Alex Wellman Patrick Sondheimer is heard screaming to his co-pilot "Open the goddam door" as passengers scream in the background The dramatic last moments of the doomed Germanwings flight have been revealed in a chilling transcript of the black box recording that shows the captain screaming at Andreas Lubitz “Open the goddam door”. Patrick Sondheimer, pilot of the traffic plane, is heard frantically pleading with the killer to let him into the cockpit, just seconds before crashing into the Alps. BEA Germanwings CVR Evidence:...

A South Korean court sentenced the captain of a ferry whose sinking left over 300 people dead and plunged the country into prolonged mourning and soul-searching to 36 years in prison Tuesday. Capt. Lee Joon-seok was convicted of gross negligence, but was also acquitted of a homicide charge, which claimed that he left the passengers behind while the ship was sinking. Family members of the victims, most of whom were teenagers, immediately criticized the sentence for Lee and other crew members as too lenient, some weeping and shouting during the court proceedings. The vessel's chief engineer got 30 years, and...

If we are unable or unwilling to see and confront the extreme lack of character -- the dishonor -- in Captain Lee's behavior, on the grounds that "we weren't in his shoes," then we are only increasing the chances that our own response, should we ever find ourselves in similar shoes, will be as weak as his. If we rationalize his action, we are implicitly rationalizing our own. That, in fact, is likely the main reason we excuse shameful actions so easily today: we are hoping to excuse ourselves from scrutiny (including and especially self-scrutiny) regarding our own failures of...

It’s made for Hollywood: the story of an average American family man, captain of a cargo ship in dangerous waters, his vessel overtaken by armed Somali pirates demanding ransom, saving his crew by allowing himself to be removed from the boat and taken hostage. All of this is the basis for “Captain Phillips,” starring Tom Hanks as the titular, real-life hero. The only problem, say some members of the real Capt. Phillips’ crew, is none of it is true. Capt. Richard Phillips, they say, is no hero, and the film is one big lie. “Phillips wasn’t the big leader like...

As the sun’s rays broke over the top of the eastern hills this morning, the military blogging community was coming to grips with the loss of a truly remarkable man. Retired Navy Captain Carroll LeFon, who was known to thousands by his “nom de blog” of Neptunus Lex, died when his Israeli-built F-21 Kfir single-seat fighter aircraft crashed at NAS Fallon at around 0915 yesterday morning. The challenge in writing about such a man is that my command of the language to do justice to him is insufficient for the task, yet his mastery of words gave vivid understanding on...

The Italian coast guard orders in vain the captain of the capsized Italian cruise ship to return on board to oversee the evacuation, according to a recording of the conversation released by a leading Italian newspaper...

The publication of the transcripts by Il Fatto Quotidiano newspaper comes as it was revealed junior officers onboard led a 'mutiny' after the ship struck a reef and captain Francesco Schettino dithered in giving the order to abandon the stricken vessel. According to coastguards Schettino did not give the crucial instructions until 10.58pm on Friday night, more than one hour after the initial impact with the rocks, and so wasting valuable time that contributed to the loss of six lives. Officials say that during those chaotic minutes, the bungling skipper had tried to palm them off and minimise the dangerous...

The captain of the US 'Audacity of Hope' arrested for violating a Greek ban on sailing to Gaza from its ports was freed on Tuesday, Reuters reports. Greek authorities last week banned ships destined for Gaza from leaving Greek ports "for their safety". American John Klusmire, 60, was charged during a hearing on Tuesday with breaching the ban and putting lives at risk after being intercepted last week at sea by the Hellenic Coast Guard. When ordered to return to port Klusmire, ferrying mostly American passengers, refused, leading to a two-hour stand off that ended when Greek commandos boarded his...

Entire plane evacuated for man's refusal to pull up his pants. He was flying home to attend best friend's funeralCan a baggy-pants fashion trend land you in jail and clear a plane before takeoff? It can in San Francisco International Airport. Deshon Marman, a 20-year-old football star from San Francisco's Bayview neighborhood, was asked to pull up his sagging pajama pants before his U.S. Airways flight home -- a flight to take him to his best friend's funeral. Marman's friend, David Henderson, was shot and killed on those same Bayview streets. Marman told his mother (see video) that he at...

CONTINGENCY OPERATING SITE WARRIOR, Iraq, March 23, 2011 – Capt. Kim Walter knew she wasn’t going to get rich when she became the first woman in her family to join the Army. Army Capt. Kim Walter works on her daily reports at Contingency Operating Site Warrior in Kirkuk, Iraq, March 7, 2011. U.S. Army photo by Pfc. Alyxandra McChesney  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “I didn’t join for the money, and I didn’t join for school,” said the operations officer serving here with the 1st Infantry Division’s 101st Brigade Support Battalion, 1st Advise and Assist Task Force. “I joined...

Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit noted over the weekend that buried deep on the HHS website is a list of over 100 companies/organizations that have been granted waivers from the new health care law. Some of the companies on the list are well know, e.g. Olive Garden and Cracker Barrel restaurants and CIGNA health insurance. Others on the list seem conspicuous because of their small size. For instance, how did a company called Captain Elliot’s Party Boats get a waiver for their 10 employees? It turns out Captain Elliot’s Party Boats is the name of a company in Freeport, Texas...

Japanese prosecutors have released the Chinese captain of a fishing boat who was arrested in waters off disputed islands in the East Sea earlier in September. "We decided it was inappropriate to continue the investigation while keeping the suspect in custody any further, considering the future of the Japan-China relationship," an official from the Osaka prosecutors' office said at news conference on Friday afternoon. Japan arrested the 41-year-old Chinese fishing boat captain, Zhan Qixiong, on September 8 following the collision of his boat with two Japanese coast guard vessels. The collision occurred in the disputed islands in the East Sea....