Navy Seals

The geopolitical sophistication that the producers of Navy Seals - a movie that should in all honesty be called Top Water Pistol - expect from their audience is revealed in a caption before the rousing finish. It discloses that Beirut is in Lebanon. The location ensures another round of spirited Arab-bashing - a pastime Hollywood is threatening to qualify as an Olympic event by the time the athletes gather in Barcelona in 1992. Navy Seals may be a silly saber-rattler and it may rip off dialogue from Star Wars and that recruiting poster masquerading as a motion picture, Top Gun. But in the shameless exploitation of American frustration with the Byzantine complexities of the Middle East, its humble competition is the likes of The Delta Force, Iron Eagle and Death Before Dishonor.

After two years as commander of the East Coast SEALs - the Navy's most elite warriors - Ridley Township native Capt. Dave Morrison has stepped into a new role, leading a joint forces special operations command. In his new leadership position, Morrison will not only work with Navy officers but with all of the armed forces to train commanders and their staffs on how to employ special operation forces. "It's an exciting time to be in special operations," said Morrison in a phone interview from Virginia.

If I'm a hostage in Beirut, I'm pretty sure that I don't want my rescue team to prepare for its transcontinental, surgical midnight strike with an all-night drinking binge in a bar outside Norfolk, Va. That, however, is how the title commandos operate in the movie "Navy SEALs. " They put a contemporary Beastie Boys spin on the old concept of manifest destiny - you gotta fight for your right to party, even in the farthest corners of the world. Michael Biehn and Charlie Sheen star as members of the elite commando unit known as the SEALs (apparently, Shoot Everybody And Leave)

The Navy SEALS were told to cancel their plans to have eight paratroopers drop into Florida A & M's stadium to deliver the game ball and an American flag during tomorrow's homecoming festivities. The SEALS tried to convince school officials not to stop the flyover, but agreed yesterday to cancel the event. Authorities were concerned that fear of terrorism could cause some of the fans at the 25,500-seat stadium to panic if they didn't realize why the SEALS were landing on the field during the national anthem.

WHAT A DAMN unfair world it is when someone so courageous - and so physically and mentally fit to take on an incredibly daunting task that 99.9 percent of us couldn't even perform - gets killed in a faraway land at such a young age, away from the people who love him. Petty Officer 1st Class Michael Strange, 25, a 2004 graduate of North Catholic High School, was one of the 22 Navy SEALs killed in a helicopter crash in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan...

Blue Ivy Carter made her public debut Saturday when Beyoncé Knowles and Jay-Z took their 7-week-old daughter to lunch at Sant Ambroeus in Manhattan's West Village. The "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)" singer, 30, held her newborn close in a blue BabyBjorn. Moving on Mary Jo Buttafuoco , who was shot in the face by her husband's teenage lover nearly 20 years ago, remarried in Las Vegas on Saturday. TMZ.com reports she used her maiden name, Connery , when she exchanged vows with Stu Tendler , said to manage a Vegas print shop.

WASHINGTON - A new book says President Obama hoped to put Osama bin Laden on trial, showing the U.S. commitment to due process under law, if the al-Qaeda leader had surrendered during a U.S. raid in Pakistan last year. In The Finish, Mark Bowden, a former Inquirer reporter, quotes Obama as saying he thought he would be in a strong political position to argue in favor of giving bin Laden the full rights of a criminal defendant if bin Laden went on trial for the Sept. 11 attacks. But Bowden says Obama expected bin Laden to go down fighting.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.   — Lt. Col. John A. McCrae     Those words written to reflect the battlefield realities of World War I remain meaningful nearly a hundred years later. American soldiers are still dying on foreign soil. Like the doughboys back then, they commit their lives to a fight that isn't so easy for some to understand.

The city will publicly mourn the death of Petty Officer 1st Class Michael Strange, of Northeast Philly, on Thursday. Strange, 25, a U.S. Navy cryptologist technician, who was assigned to a Navy SEAL team, was killed in the early morning of Aug. 6 in a helicopter crash in eastern Afghanistan after it was shot down by insurgents. His visitation and funeral will be held from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul, 18th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and will be followed by a 3 p.m. Mass.

William Ignatius McCloskey, 83, formerly of Devon, a builder and stockbroker, died Wednesday, June 6, of a heart attack at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Palm Beach, Fla. Mr. McCloskey grew up with five siblings in Overbrook. His father, Matthew H. McCloskey Jr., owned McCloskey Construction Co. and was ambassador to Ireland during the Kennedy administration. During World War II, as a young teen, Mr. McCloskey worked one summer at the shipyard his father owned in Tampa, Fla., where he helped build concrete ships used in the invasion of Normandy.

Dozens indicted over cheating ATLANTA - A grand jury indicted about three dozen educators Friday in one of the nation's largest cheating scandals that rocked Atlanta's public schools. The indictment named the former Superintendent Beverly Hall as well as several high-level administrators, principals, and teachers. Hall faces charges including racketeering, false statements, and theft. She retired just days before the 2011 probe was released, and has previously denied the allegations.

The debate over the use of deadly force against an American who is on foreign soil and has ties to al-Qaeda sounds like a hypothetical straight out of my first-year Constitution law class at Penn. I can picture the back and forth on whether such killings violated the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable seizure or the Fifth Amendment's due-process clause. But this is no academic exercise, as the recent release of a 16-page Justice Department "white paper" makes clear: "Targeting a member of an enemy force who poses an imminent threat of violent attack to the United States is not unlawful.

A Navy SEAL commander who was a Pottstown native died Saturday in southern Afghanistan of noncombat-related injuries. An unidentified U.S. military official told the Associated Press the death of Cmdr. Job W. Price, 42, appeared to be suicide. His death is under investigation. "The Naval Special Warfare family is deeply saddened by the loss of our teammate," said Capt. Robert Smith, commander of Naval Special Warfare Group TWO. The highly decorated Price was stationed at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story, Va., and was part of "stability operations" in Afghanistan.

WASHINGTON - A new book says President Obama hoped to put Osama bin Laden on trial, showing the U.S. commitment to due process under law, if the al-Qaeda leader had surrendered during a U.S. raid in Pakistan last year. In The Finish, Mark Bowden, a former Inquirer reporter, quotes Obama as saying he thought he would be in a strong political position to argue in favor of giving bin Laden the full rights of a criminal defendant if bin Laden went on trial for the Sept. 11 attacks. But Bowden says Obama expected bin Laden to go down fighting.

Osama bin Laden hid in his bedroom for at least 15 minutes as Navy SEALs battled their way through his Pakistani compound, making no attempt to arm himself before a U.S. commando shot him as he peeked from his doorway, according to the first published account by a participant in the now-famous raid on May 2, 2011. The account, in a book by one of the SEAL team leaders, sheds new light on the al-Qaeda chief's final moments. In the account, bin Laden appears neither to surrender nor to directly challenge the special forces troops who killed his son and two associates as they worked their way to his third-floor apartment.

William Ignatius McCloskey, 83, formerly of Devon, a builder and stockbroker, died Wednesday, June 6, of a heart attack at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Palm Beach, Fla. Mr. McCloskey grew up with five siblings in Overbrook. His father, Matthew H. McCloskey Jr., owned McCloskey Construction Co. and was ambassador to Ireland during the Kennedy administration. During World War II, as a young teen, Mr. McCloskey worked one summer at the shipyard his father owned in Tampa, Fla., where he helped build concrete ships used in the invasion of Normandy.

AS WE THINK about ways to reintegrate vets into society, "Battleship" presents an attractive option: Give them starring roles in summer blockbusters, next to supermodel Brooklyn Decker — precisely where Iraq War vet Gregory Gadson found himself last year, on leave from the Wounded Warrior program he headed by virtue of his leadership skills and status as a double amputee (in 2007, he survived an IED). "It's been a real treat," said Gadson, trying to describe his sudden liftoff into the orbit of Hollywood stardom.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.   — Lt. Col. John A. McCrae     Those words written to reflect the battlefield realities of World War I remain meaningful nearly a hundred years later. American soldiers are still dying on foreign soil. Like the doughboys back then, they commit their lives to a fight that isn't so easy for some to understand.

Thank you, Navy SEALs, for killing Osama bin Laden. And thank you, President Obama, for turning them loose to do their job, just as you said you would. This past week, an Obama campaign Web commercial featuring Bill Clinton quotes Mitt Romney, in 2007, downplaying the significance of getting bin Laden: "It's not worth moving heaven and earth, spending billions of dollars, just trying to catch one person. " That ad got the goat of Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.). "Shame on Barack Obama for diminishing the memory of Sept.