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Now, welcome to the award-winning Best of the Left podcast with Cookstay from the Progressive, Citizen Radio, the Majority Report, the Young Turks, Comedian Lee Camp, the Tom Hartman program, and activism from the Unfuck It Up project.

And my one comment about Edward Snowden is that it's hard to imagine anyone being in Hawaii for a week, much less living there, and staying as tasty white as he appears to be.

Now we're seeing real courage in journalism and in public life. I'm talking of course about Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian and Edward Snowden, the whistleblower.

They both at considerable risk to their own freedom have done everything in their power to defend our freedoms as Americans.

By exposing the vast NSA spying operation that the Obama administration has been running, both Greenwald and especially Snowden may face prosecution.

And Snowden, rather than remain anonymous, has chosen to come forward as the source of Greenwald's expose, saying with great fortitude, I've no intention of hiding who I am because I know I've done nothing wrong.

He has no illusions about being safe either. I understand he said that I'll be made to suffer from my actions, and he reportedly is now in hiding somewhere in Hong Kong.

As with Bradley Manning, Snowden's critics say he's helping America's enemies, but he's doing no such thing.

My sole motive, he said, is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name, and that which is done against them.

Glenn Greenwald deserves a Pulitzer Prize for this scoop, and Edward Snowden deserves all of our thanks. He's an American hero.

I'm Matt Rothschild, and that's how I see it.

I believe that myself, suddenly I'm upon top of the world. It should have been somebody else.

Believe it or not, I'm walking on air. I never thought I could feel so free.

By the way, I'm winged at a brand, who could it be? Believe it or not, it's just me.

I'm sure everybody knows where we citizen radio fall on this.

Hang him. Obviously we think he's a hero, he did a really courageous thing.

I was fucking nuts. Exactly what we said on the show yesterday was the reason we assumed he wouldn't come out is because we were like,

okay, so number one, how brave do you have to be to blow the whistle on something this big? Pretty fucking brave, right?

Number two, how much braver do you have to be to come out with this information under the Obama administration who has declared a war, a literal war on whistleblowers?

Well, I think Greenwald really cut to the heart of the matter when he tweeted, courage is contagious.

And I love that because I kept talking about how amazing it is whenever a whistleblower still comes forward because the government's made clear their intention to hunt them to the ends of the earth.

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