Tonight on The Independents: Former NSA Official Stewart Baker Accuses Libertarians of 'Obama Derangement Syndrome'; Major-Party Partisans Waffle on Weed, Plus Reason's Peter Suderman and TV's Andy Levy!

Tonight at 9 pm ET, Fox Business Network's The Independents comes in with Part I of a two-installment Stories of the Year package, leading off with discussion about 2013's bombshell revelations about the National Security Agency's spying activities. Former NSA general counsel and Bush-era Department of Homeland Security official Stewart Baker does not agree with this word "spying," and generally does not share the same antipathy toward federal surveillance activities as the show's co-hosts. The resulting interview is…contentious.

The left-right panelists, former Kerry/Obama aide Mark Hannah and GOP Deputy Communications Director Sarah Isgur Flores, compare the two major parties' ongoing civil wars, and later try to outdo each other in not answering the question, "Would you legalize weed?" Reason Senior Editor Peter Suderman talks about—wait for it—Obamacare! And TV's Andy Levy, from the great Fox show Red Eye, talks about the best filibusters and/or celebrity meltdowns of 2013. Syria also gets a mention in there somewhere, as does the word "statists" (twice!).

It is a very good television program, which I can state with confidence because it's already done! I may lurk in the open thread here, just to police the Kmele Foster fanclub activity….