I couldn’t fall  asleep last night, and I couldn’t figure out why until I started talking on tonight’s show. That’s when I mentioned that last night, upon learning of the “Collateral Murder” video, I couldn’t watch it.  I said that I didn’t want to see the killing. But after the show, while uploading the podcast and doing my usual after-show work, I realized that I couldn’t not watch it…

So, I braced myself and watched the horrors of war. I talked a bit about it tonight, but the guests I had hoped to have on to discuss what went down weren’t available tonight. So be sure to tune in tomorrow night, as I’ll be joined by Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist who went to Iraq in 2003 to cover the war, unembedded. He has since become world renowned for documenting the human cost of the Iraq war.

But there was no lack of topics to discuss tonight.

For years now, I’ve been talking about the issue of net neutrality, and how important it is to keep the internet open. Well, today, a federal appeals court in Washington DC ruled that the FCC “lacked the authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks”.  Uh, yeah. The court said that the FCC doesn’t have the power to regulate the internet.

My friend Dan Patterson happens to be the guy in charge of digital platform development for ABC News Radio. I called on him to talk about why this is so important.  While I had him on the phone (he was outside of the Apple Store, going in to buy a keyboard for his new iPad), I asked him to explain what was so great about that new gadget too…

If you want to learn more about net neutrality and get involved to help keep the internet open to all of us, please check out www.savetheinternet.org and www.publicknowledge.org.

After a news update from Ellen Ratner of the Talk Radio News Service, we moved on to the big story of the day– the mine explosion in West Virgina.

Although all the major media outlets are covering the sad story of the 25 dead miners and the 4 whose fates are still unknown, the real story is the Massey Energy – parent company of Performance Coal Co. – and its owner, Don Blankenship.  Blankenship is not only one of the more heinous owners who doesn’t give a damn about his employees and their safety, the community in which his mines are located or the effect of his company’s operations on the environment, but he also uses his massive fortune to buy judges and politicians.

Blogger Karoli who’s done such great work on health care reform, has a new blog up at Crooks & Liars, and she gave us a good look at Blankenship and why we shouldn’t be surprised there was such a disaster at one of his mines.

We also spoke about her newest piece on a guy named Mark Jacoby, a GOP operative who is actually the only person in recent years ever convicted of voter registration fraud (eventhough his peeps tried to assert those charges on the innocent folks at ACORN).  He’s apparently up to his old tricks…

Tomorrow, as mentioned earlier, I’ll be joined by journalist Dahr Jamail, and we’ll have our regular Wednesday visit from Christy Harvey of the Center for American Progress… Talk to you then!