Welcome to a special edition of the Best of the Left podcast. Technically, I'm taking a break from the show today.

I'm not releasing a brand new episode because I'm at Net Roots Nation 2013 in San Jose.

It's a event I go to every year. It's excellent and good to be here,

but the logistics of trying to put together a new show are nightmarish.

So instead, what I'm doing is I'm releasing an episode that is I can essentially promise you

that it's either new to you or if you heard this, you should hear it again anyways.

So everything that you hear today, besides me talking, was originally recorded

on the 4th of July 2006. We're going to be hearing clips from both Rachel Maddo and Tom Hartman

as they use the birthday of the country as sort of an excuse to take a look back and take

time to step back from the stories of the day and look at it from a more historical perspective.

And so if you've heard the term evergreen, I mean like a tree stays green for a long time,

media content can also be evergreen, it means it stays good. I think that this content,

especially from Rachel Maddo, is not just evergreen, it's like as if it literally bloomed again.

She is talking in 2006 about the NSA spying scandal that broke at the time,

and now with the new revelations of the NSA spying scandal of 2013,

as well as drone strikes on American citizens and the whole variety of ways that the executive

branch has sort of taken power for itself that a lot of people don't necessarily think it should have.

What Rachel talks about in 2006 will bring a lot of light on 2013 and it just adds a whole new

layer. The last seven years have gone by, we'll add a whole new layer to what she's talking about.

So I absolutely want everyone to stick around and listen to this show, not just skip ahead,

because you think it's a rerun. This is really excellent stuff. I wouldn't be playing it,

otherwise. So now the show will start as normal. Of course, this program is made possible by the

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