Chris Hayes was driving me crazy, because I was beginning to think I'd need to start watching television. Luckily I've been saved from that fate, it seems. Hayes' comments on MSNBC, for which he has now absurdly apologized, were the type of basic honesty -- or, better, truth telling as revolutionary act -- that was tempting me.

MSNBC is part of a larger corporation that makes more money from war than from infotainment. Phil Donahue learned his lesson, along with Jeff Cohen. Cenk Uygur did too -- or perhaps he taught them one. Keith Olbermann didn't last. Rachel Maddow wants war "reformed" but would never be caught blurting out the sort of honesty that got Hayes into trouble.

Hayes questioned the appropriateness of calling warriors heroes, and of doing so in order to promote more war-making. He was right to do that. This practice has been grotesquely inappropriate for a very long time.

Pericles honored those who had died in war on the side of Athens:

The poison seeps slowly into the future. No one notices.
“The Obama administration,” the Wall Street Journal informs us, “plans to arm Italy’s fleet of Reaper drone aircraft, a move that could open the door for sales of advanced hunter-killer drone technology to other allies . . .”

I can’t quite get beyond the name: Reaper drones?

“The Predator’s manufacturer, General Atomics, later developed the larger Reaper,” John Sifton wrote last February in The Nation, “a moniker implying that the United States was fate itself, cutting down enemies who were destined to die. That the drones’ payloads were called Hellfire missiles, invoking the punishment of the afterlife, added to a sense of righteousness.”

Early on, George Bush called his invasion of the Middle East “a crusade” and declared that “God is not neutral” in the war on terror. The rightist spin was that we had engaged “a clash of civilizations”; and Ann Coulter, articulating the unrestrained righteousness that 9/11 had unleashed in America, declared: “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”

When Gov. Rick Scott's (R-FL) administration distributed its controversial lists of possible non-citizen voters last month, state statute required the state's 67 county supervisors of elections to send out letters requiring those voters to prove their eligibility to vote within 30 days - a window that will end in the next couple of weeks in many counties. But a ThinkProgress survey of several county supervisors in Florida reveals that the lists of presumed non-eligible voters is riddled with errors. In large and small jurisdictions across the state, supervisors have found that a large number of the voters on the list are indeed eligible voters.

Volusia County Supervisor of Elections Ann McFall told ThinkProgress that she and the state's 66 other county elections supervisors sent a "clear message" to the Scott administration at a Tampa conference two weeks ago. "One after another, [they] got up and talked about inaccuracies [in the state's voter purge list of alleged non-citizen voters]."

In Miami-Dade, the count of voters whose citizenship status has been challenged by the Scott administration numbered in the hundreds. With time left to respond,

Sunday June 3rd, 2012, Youngstown- Last week Cornelius Harris, a level 5 prisoner at Ohio State Penitentiary (OSP) resumed the May Day hunger strike, in protest of the warden's slow response to the prisoner's demands. It is unknown when Mr. Harris began refusing food, how many consecutive meals he has refused, and whether or not other prisoners have joined Mr. Harris's hunger strike. OSP's warden, David Bobby refused to comment or make any statement about Mr. Harris's situation or condition, including how many meals he has refused.

Mr. Harris says that Warden Bobby has "found a way to twist this hunger strike around to his favor by asking for more funding for programs and material that a level 5 prisoner will never see". Mr. Harris issued the following list of grievances.

- Warden Bobby has failed to keep his promise to address outrageously high commissary prices.
- Lack of recreational material like exercise or sporting equipment, even though there is money in an "I+E" fund earmarked for these materials.
- Low quality and lack of variety in television and movie programming.

This letter is in response to the articles covering the JP Morgan Chase investment debacle.
Well Mr. Dimon, it looks like you and your company have landed in the rough. This is because of the same type of stupidity and hubris that helped to cause the Great Recession is now déjà vu all over again. Now what? Layoffs? Did someone say layoffs? Sir, I've worked in the finance industry for the better part of 16 years and have never witnessed such a reckless disregard for the investor's money as this.

In my opinion this boarders on criminal and should be {as it is} investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Securities and Exchange Commission. As I often do I took the courtesy of CC-ing you on this letter out of fairness and the opportunity for rebuttal. I do not fear reprisal nor expect a response. This letter is being written on behalf of the numerous friends I have that work for your company in Cleveland, Ohio. The moment this fiasco became public was the same moment that struck panic into the minds of your employees. Only four years ago and here we go again down the slippery slope