There is a double standard at work with regard to Keith Olbermann's suspension, not only between other personalities appearing on MSNBC as commentators, but also at the very top level of the food chain.

Comcast now owns is about MSNBC after their acquisition was completed earlier this year is approved (and it will be, I'm sure), despite protestations from many of us. A look at campaign finance disclosures for several organizations shows that Phil Anschutz, chairman of Comcast, content partner with Comcast, donated large sums of money to the First Amendment Alliance, one of the largest outside groups targeting Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections.

The Anschutz Corporation, wholly owned by Phil Anschutz, gave $50,000 on 9/24/2010 to the First Amendment Alliance. The two candidates targeted by the First Amendment Alliance? Jack Conway and Michael Bennet.

Keith Olbermann gave to Jack Conway's campaign along with Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords.

In addition, the Anschutz family donated $169,900 to Republican candidates and committees during the 2010 election cycle, according to Open Secrets.

Additionally, Comcast Corporation has contributed $125,000 to the Republican Governors' Association in the 2010 cycle (as of 9/30/2010). (Added: Comcast notes it has also donated the same sum to the DGA)

There's been a lot of chatter about MSNBC policy, and whether Olbermann should have gotten advance approval for his donations to Jack Conway, Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords on October 28th. The policy I've seen reads like this:

NBC and MSNBC TV require permission of the president of NBC News. (MSNBC.com is a joint venture of NBC Universal and Microsoft.)

"Anyone working for NBC News who takes part in civic or other outside activities may find that these activities jeopardize his or her standing as an impartial journalist because they may create the appearance of a conflict of interest. Such activities may include participation in or contributions to political campaigns or groups that espouse controversial positions. You should report any such potential conflicts in advance to, and obtain prior approval of, the President of NBC News or his designee."

That language clearly says "should" and not "must". Further, anyone who thinks Keith Olbermann is an impartial journalist should have their head examined. He's not, never has been, never will be, and is not presented as one.

But it leaves this question lingering for me: How is it that the parent corporation of NBC and chairman of that corporation, Pat Buchanan and Joe Scarborough are accorded First Amendment rights to political speech and Keith Olbermann is not?

GET THIS: From the NYTimes:

The News Corporation is one of the biggest suppliers of content to Comcast, with contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

UPDATE: PCCC has a petition you can sign to MSNBC: Tell MSNBC that if they want to keep their viewers, they must put Keith back on the air NOW!

And if you're on Twitter, progressives are tweeting MSNBC with their displeasure there too.

Gawker says NBC News denies their standards apply to MSNBC commentators.

For an understanding of the relationship between Anschutz and Comcast, see this Muckety map (Flash required). It's a combination of hockey teams, media, ticket sales and Qwest Communications. Some question the associations. They exist. I've linked to them. Here's another.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has issued a statement demanding Olbermann's immediate reinstatement.

“It is outrageous that General Electric/MSNBC would suspend Keith Olbermann for exercising his constitutional rights to contribute to a candidate of his choice. This is a real threat to political discourse in America and will have a chilling impact on every commentator for MSNBC.

“We live in a time when 90 percent of talk radio is dominated by right-wing extremists, when the Republican Party has its own cable network (Fox) and when progressive voices are few and far between.

“At a time when the ownership of Fox news contributed millions of dollars to the Republican Party, when a number of Fox commentators are using the network as a launching pad for their presidential campaigns and are raising money right off the air, it is absolutely unacceptable that MSNBC suspended one of the most popular progressive commentators in the country.

“Is Rachel Maddow or Ed Schultz next? Is this simply a ‘personality conflict’ within MSNBC or is one of America’s major corporations cracking down on a viewpoint they may not like? Whatever the answer may be, Keith Olbermann should be reinstated immediately and allowed to present his point of view.”

Jed Lewison over at Kos takes on the Joe Scarborough donations and hypocrisy in MSNBC's response.

Statement from Comcast:

“The joint venture between Comcast and GE has not yet received regulatory approval. Comcast is not in any way involved with decisions made currently by NBC News. We have pledged that when the transaction is concluded, Comcast will abide by the same policies for NBC’s news and public affairs programming that have been in place since GE acquired the company in 1986. Comcast is committed to the independence of NBC’s news operations.

We hope to acquire NBC Universal in the coming months, but by law we play no role in current operations. Mr. Philip Anschutz is not the chairman of Comcast Corporation, nor is he on its board, or in any way involved with the management of the company.”

ThinkProgress notes another possible tie between Comcast and Olbermann's suspension.

And so it continues. You can always count on Rep. Steve King to be the lowest of the low. Here's his newest acute observation on Rep. Grijalva's plight.

Unlike Grijalva, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is a big fan of Arizona's crackdown. After praising the effort in a statement earlier this week, King blasted Grijalva's position last night. During an interview on Fox News, King absurdly suggested that Grijalva's district has been "ceded" and accused the Arizona lawmaker of "advocating for Mexico" and against the United States.

LAURA INGRAHAM: This boycott is intended to do, what? I would imagine to intimidate people from supporting this law which, as far as I can tell, is wildly popular, but to intimidate because they're using dollars. Is there anything wrong with that?

REP. STEVE KING: Well, it looks like the case is that, that he's trying to scare the businesses out of Arizona, or he's trying to get the businesses to change their position and press the legislature to reverse the law that was just signed by the governor the other day. I'm wondering if we look at the map of Congressman Grijalva's congressional district if we haven't already ceded that component of Arizona to Mexico judging by the voice that comes out of him, he's advocating for Mexico rather than the United States and against the rule of law, which is one of the central pillars of American exceptionalism.

Steve King should be the Governor of Texas at this point. The fear of brown people is upon us. If you're brown, watch out.

Of course, this is coming from the same guy with the epic humanity to want to put an electric fence along the border, because we do it with "livestock all the time" too.

Digby links to a graph that shows a bunch of other states are lining up to pass frakked up bills next.

And then she adds:

Yes, American exceptionalism is so exceptional that right wingers are allowed to carve out exceptions to any part of the constitution they don't like. Strangely, the parts they don't like most often seem to be the ones that enumerate rights for people who don't look like them.

The xenophobes are on the warpath.

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I spent all day traveling yesterday, so I wasn't able to get this up, bu Darcy Burner's keynote speech at Netroots Nation on Saturday night was classic Darcy: concise, but compelling. Especially the heart of the speech:

So President Clinton -- how many of you were here for President Clinton's speech the other night? -- President Clinton did something very interesting in his speech. He delivered two fundamentally contradictory messages. He said, support the health-care legislation no matter what it is. That was one message he sent that he delivered quite clearly. But the other message that he delivered was that "Don't ask, don't tell" became policy even though he knew it was the wrong thing, because, he said, we didn't support him and make him do the right thing. That second message, that we have to make our leaders do the right thing was raw and true.

We can't rely on people in authority to make everything right. We have got to do the hard work of governing. It's our job as Americans. It's our obligation. And to be perfectly blunt, I consider it my obligation for Henry.

The vehicle we have for change is the people we have elected, and we have done, collectively, a tremendous job of electing people to office in this country. We have taken back the House, we have taken back the Senate, we have taken the presidency of the United States.

But that is just the beginning of the battle. There are a lot of people -- mostly not the people in this room, but a lot of people who thought that was sufficient and have stopped. We have to help the people that we have elected. And to be perfectly blunt, we have been asked to.

I have been working for the past several months with the Congressional Progressive Caucus -- eighty-three of the most progressive members of the United States House and the United States Senate -- and the message that I get from them consistently is: "We are doing everything in our power to make a difference. But we have to have the support of the grassroots. We need the grassroots helping to frame the message, we need the grassroots applying pressure."

In the health-care debate that's going down right now, the Congressional Progressive Caucus did something absolutely revolutionary in March -- which is that in March Congressman Raul Grijalva, the newly elected co-chair of the caucus, whipped the progressive members of the caucus and got enough of the members to say, "We will not support any piece of health-care legislation that doesn't include a public option."

That the progressives were able to then send a letter to President Obama and to Nancy Pelosi and to Steny Hoyer saying, "Guess what? You want health-care legislation? It isn't the Blue Dogs you need to be worrying about. You need to talk to progressives, because we are drawing the line, and we are not going to back down."

The next day I heard it being bandied about that Darcy suggested caving on the public option. As I told my friends, that wasn't what I heard. And if you watch the video, I don't think it's what you'll hear either.

[Video from Sum of Change. Mine sucked.]