Thriller writer extraordinaire C.J. Box is back with me today, discussing his new novel, Stone Cold which has a subplot that is torn from today’s headline story from the New Yorker on  Peter Lanza, the father of Sandy Hook killer Adam Lanza.  The dilemma of what to do about disturbed young adults before they actually commit mayhem is as tough a problem as there is in domestic law enforcement, and the latest in Box’s Joe Pickett series will turn you upside down on that problem as well as the dilemma of “private justice.”

C.J. will be on in hour two, and veteran Riverside County prosecutor Mike Hestrin, seeking o become that massive county’s DA in June, joins me in hour three.  My law partner, Joseph Timothy Cook, longtime civilian aircraft disaster litigator and A-4 carrier pilot joins me in hour one to sift through the mounting mysteries surrounding  the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines 370.

Marine Corps Captain Reid “Eeyeore” Nannen  died in a training exercise in Nevada flying the F/A-18C this week, and a memorial fund to benefit his four children has been established here.

Former Senators Jim Talent and Jon Kyl –two of the most respected alums of the body– lay it all out for you in this piece.  Read it and send it to friends and friendly opponents alike.  We are not hollowing out but gutting the military, and it will cause misery and massive loss of life around the globe.

The one chart view:

The weekly column from Clark Judge:

Division and Confusion: Europe Without America
By Clark S. Judge: managing director, White House Writers Group, Inc.; chairman, Pacific Research Institute

If you want to see why American leadership is essential to the effectiveness of Europe in global affairs, just meet with a multinational collection of European political and other officials.

I had occasion to share an evening with such a group this past week.  The discussions were on background, not for attribution, so, as with last week’s column, I won’t name the speakers or identify the occasion of the meeting.  But those details are not necessary to understand what they said or the implications.

For when the question of Ukraine and the Russian incursion into the Crimea came up, the opinions were as diverse as the countries these officials represented.  I gather from an exchange of notes after the Europeans left that every American present was as startled as I at the amount of disagreement over the Russian action and the passion with which the disagreements were expressed.

The central fault line was proximity – how close a speaker’s country was to Russia or Ukraine.  In the United States, when we hear about border problems with Mexico or the terrorist bombing at the Boston Marathon, we don’t say, “Oh, that’s Texas or Massachusetts’ problem.” We understand such national security matters are the concern of the nation as a whole.  This is clearly not the case in Europe. Continue Reading