The overwhelming presence in the Extortion 17 press conference last week, which I wrote about in last week's syndicated column, was the pain that filled every corner of the room. The shootdown of the Chinook CH-47 carrying 17 SEALS and 13 other American forces on August 6, 2011 may have faded like newsprint for most of us, but there on the top floor of the National Press Club, a stone's throw from the White House, the shock of it was still nightmare-vivid, particularly as the families described the holes in the military's investigation, and closed doors and runaround they gotten ever since. What  they want are answers to their natural questions, and accountability for the failures of the mission. For them, this is a grieving process without...

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Great Britain is once again being rocked by revelations of the hell on earth little British girls are growing up in as sex slaves to gangs of Muslim, mainly Pakistani men -- and the craven impotence of British society which above all are supposed to be guardians of its own precious children.

The Telegraph's Alice Pearson writes:

Rochdale, Rotherham, Derby, Oxford. The towns change, but the pattern is always the same. Gangs of men, mainly of Pakistani Muslim heritage, lure white girls as young as 10 with gifts and displays of affection. Next, the girl is raped as a way of “breaking her in”. Once the child’s spirit is subdued, and her mind fogged with drugs, she is sold for sex to multiple men at £200 a time....

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A preface to my appearance on Afterwords this weekend, airing on C-SPAN2 on Saturday May 18 at 10pm, Sunday May 19 at 9pm, and Monday May 20 at midnight and 3am. It will re-air on C-SPAN2 next Sunday May 26 at noon.

Every author wants to go on C-SPAN Book TV's Afterwords, and why not? Book TV audiences actually tune in to hear about books they might like to read. I was elated to have my new book, American Betrayal, chosen for the Afterwords show and went to tape the program yesterday with high hopes.

It is a most civilized setting, produced by lovely people, and it provides an author, who has spent years alone in a hole, reading, writing, toiling, thinking, with the chance, faciliated by an informed interviewer, to tell the world what it's all about. Lay out the themes. Hit the highlights. Even defend the controversial bits and emit some sparks along the way just for fun. 

But no. That is, this was not exactly my experience as you'll see if you tune in. It was tough at times to get a word in edgeways (especially before the off-camera intervention took place midway through) so there are times when the interview is more like a battle for airtime-space -- more Senate filibuster meets Hunger Games than convivial let-the-author-cut-loose-and-talk-about-baby. (Watch for host's reading of verses from The Internationale.) Baby still made as much noise as possible, of course, but the birthday party didn't come off quite as expected.

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This week's syndicated column

Grief and politics don’t mix. When raw, aching grief and the dirtiest kind of politics meet, a hot volcano of pain and outrage erupts that is unstoppable. But it is necessary. It is the only way things might ever be clean again.

I am thinking of recent casket transfer ceremonies that have taken place at Dover Air Force Base, where senior administration officials have used the solemn occasions – Benghazi, the shoot-down of Extortion 17 – less to comfort grieving families than to lay blame, to establish a narrative, to lie.

Think of Sean Smith’s mother. Think of Tyrone Woods’ father. After the Obama administration’s hugs came the Obama administration’s stonewalling. They still don’t have answers about what happened in Benghazi on the night of Sept. 11, 2012.

We don’t either.

We still don’t know who in the U.S. government gave the order not to rescue Americans under fire for eight and a half hours, and how and why such an unconscionable order was given. We still don’t know who convinced senior White House officials to tell grieving parents meeting their children’s caskets that a video-maker, not jihad against the West, was to blame for the assault that took four American lives – or what the political motivation was.

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Maybe I missed it in the US press, but I never saw this heart-stopping shot of the Martin family and other innocent Americanss in the presence of pure evil, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (circled in red), who has just set his back-pack bomb packed with nails and ball bearings near the Boston Marathon finish line.

Young Richard, 9, circled in blue, was killed, his mother Denise suffered brain injuries and lost the sight in one eye, and little Jane, in the green jacket next to Richard, lost her left leg. Father Bill, who was finishing the race, is still recovering from a shrapnel wound and hopes to regain hearing he lost in the blast.

According to the London Daily Mail, which published the picture and update on the Martin family...

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