Mr. Liu has been an embarrassment since winning the 2009 comptroller’s race. His carefully staged and utterly ineffective opposition to Mayor Bloomberg early on in his term has given way to a serious scandal involving his campaign fund-raising. Mr. Liu continues to stonewall questions about the identity of his so-called bundlers, people who organize large groups of individual donors. He is required by law to make those names public, but thus far he merely has promised to do so at some point in the future.

Convinced, apparently, that the fund-raising scandal is a mere distraction—although it has prompted a full-fledged federal investigation—Mr. Liu has been conducting business as usual as he continues to prepare for a mayoral campaign in 2013. He ended a much-publicized voluntary cap of $800 on individual donations, no doubt because the scandal has frightened off would-be donors. And most recently, The New York Times reported that Mr. Liu routinely uses government resources to issue silly proclamations attesting to the worthiness of his friends and contributors.

On one level, Mr. Liu has become a political laughingstock, someone who is impossible to take seriously. But on another level, there is nothing funny about his breathtaking arrogance. He continues to act, and raise funds, as if nothing were wrong. He apparently still believes that he will be a candidate for mayor or for re-election in 2013.

In fact, not only has he forfeited any claim to civic leadership, he has stained the office he currently holds. He was never a particularly effective elected official, but now the fund-raising scandal and his cavalier response to it has stripped him of every last bit of credibility.

He needs to quit, now, and let the vital office of the comptroller pass into more capable, more serious hands. Mr. Liu’s duties include oversight of the city’s books. In light of his campaign’s scandalous bookkeeping, Mr. Liu’s continued presence as the city’s chief financial officer is simply unacceptable.

Mr. Liu, it’s time to go.

“I recognize that I have a responsibility to honor the guidelines and conditions of my employment, and I regret that I failed to do so in this matter,” Scarborough said in a statement. “I apologize to MSNBC and to anyone who has been negatively affected by my actions."

The suspension without pay will last for two days and end this coming Wednesday. Scarborough made donations to friends and other candidates running for office near his hometown of Pensacola, Florida. NBC made it clear during its punishment of Olbermann that such donations are in violation of company policy.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

First, the network suspended its top-rated host Keith Olbermann after Politico published a report detailing  his political donations to three Democrats campaigning in Tuesday's mid-term elections. Initially, MSNBC tapped The Nation Editor Chris Hayes as Olbermann's replacement for Friday night's show, but shortly after Hayes was named, the Village Voice's Foster Kamer published a story detailing Hayes' history of contributions to Democrats.

Between 2008 and 2009 Hayes gave $1,750 to Albama Congressional candidate Joshua Segall and $250 to Illinois Congressional candidate Thomas H. Geoghegan. Representatives for MSNBC told the Times that Hayes made the donations prior to joining the network's payroll. 

Now, MSNBC spokesperson Jeremy Gaines tells The Observer that news anchor Thomas Roberts will fill-in for Olbermann on tonight's show and that Hayes had never been selected to host.

"He is not anchoring tonight. That information was incorrect," said Gaines.

Hayes posted his own version of events on his Twitter page.

"My not hosting tonight has *nothing* to do with several donations I made to two friends *before* I ever signed an MSNBC contract," Hayes wrote.

Hayes is The Nation's DC editor and a current fellow at the New America Foundation. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The American Prospect, The New Republic, The Washington Monthly, The Guardian and The Chicago Reader. Hayes' wife works in the office of the White House Counsel.

Political donations have also been an issue at MSNBC's rival, Fox News, where CEO Rupert Murdoch gave $2 million to two GOP-affiliated groups and host Sean Hannity has been criticized for allowing a Republican candidate to campaign on his show.

A spokesperson for the network told The Observer that there is "no time frame" for Olbermann's return. The Nation's Chris Hayes will fill in for Olbermann tonight, but a decision has yet to be made about next week. 

Olbermann's campaign contributions were a violation of MSNBC's ethics policy, which prohibits staffers from making political donations. Olbermann gave money to three Democrats: unsuccessful Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway, Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, and another Arizona Congressman, Raul Grijalva. All of Olbermann's contributions were $2,400, the maximum amount allowable by law during an individual election cycle.

Grijalva appeared as a guest on "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" on Oct. 28, the same day he received the donation from the MSNBC host. Olbermann did not disclose the contribution that day or on subsequent "Countdown" broadcasts. 

Campaign contributions have also caused controversy at Fox News, where CEO Rupert Murdoch gave $2 million to two GOP-affiliated groups and host Sean Hannity was accused of allowing a Republican candidate to campaign on his show. 

Olbermann, normally a prolific Tweet-er, has, thus far, remained silent on the situation.

Update 5:13PM: Olbermann's initial replacement, Chris Hayes of The Nation, has also been suspended by MSNBC following a report in the Village Voice that he also made campaign contributions to Democrats in 2008 and 2009. There's no word yet on who will fill-in for Olbermann tonight with Hayes out of commission. 

The power of mass images is not a new thing. In the 1960’s and onward, images of wealth in the west eventually exposed the weakness of the communist regime running the old Soviet bloc. There is the story, perhaps apocryphal; of Nikita Khrushchev narrating a film of Harlem in the 1960’s to demonstrate poverty in America. Instead, his poor, beleaguered constituents focused on the nylons hanging on backyard clothes lines and the number of fine autos in the street, and saw wealth rather than poverty.  Then there was that famous video of the “tank guy” darting to and fro in Tiananmen Square twenty years ago, literally placing his body in the path of the machine of state.  The transformative power of the mass media has changed governance and made it more difficult for the state to wall off the outside world.

 In the past two years, we’ve seen the transformative impact of the internet and cellular technology. Instead of a handful of news photographers hiding to capture images at Tiananmen Square, we now see millions of people in the street, cell phones in hand, taking increasingly high quality videos and photos of state oppression. Every day the pictures from Iran appear in graphic detail on our screens. In the book 1984, George Orwell prophesized that Big Brother would watch over us. Now, it looks like we get to watch over Big Brother too. The benefit of a world with no privacy may very well be a world with no secrecy.
 
There are now four billion cell phones in use throughout the world, and many of them can capture and transmit images. When coupled with social networking websites, they make millions of people both producers and consumers of information. While the information on the web is difficult to verify and easy to manipulate, it is a fact of modern political life.
 
In the Obama presidential campaign here in the United States we saw another example of the transformative impact of the World Wide Web. According to the Washington Post’s Jose Antonio Vargas:
“…3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online adding up to more than $500 million. Of those 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in increments of $100 or less. The average online donation was $80, and the average Obama donor gave more than once.”   
 
The mobilization of the public through the web has managed to overcome the anti-democratic impact of money in our electoral system. When the United States Supreme Court ruled that political campaign contributions were a form of speech that could not be limited, our ability to regulate the role of money in politics was effectively ended. The use of the web to raise campaign cash first came to prominence during Howard Dean’s presidential campaign and was raised to an art form during the Obama campaign. The impact of the web on political fundraising is the most significant change in political campaigning since JFK beat Nixon in their first TV debate back in 1960. 
 
The impact of technology on political communication is not a new phenomenon. Obama, like Jack Kennedy before him, managed to master a new technology before any other politician. FDR set the pattern when he learned to use the radio to communicate directly with the public during his fireside chats throughout the Depression and World War II.
 
The internet and cell phones add a new dimension to political technology; they are interactive media. In addition to the images presented on the web, the internet allows people to quickly spread ideas, information and organize political protest. Information comes to the public and from the public as well.  Efforts to jam and shut down these technologies are nearly always overcome by hackers and clever political organizers. In the case of Iran, no one can predict the future or even the immediate outcome of this conflict.  But something is changing in politics.  Perhaps it is as President Obama remarked recently, quoting  Dr. King:
 “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice’ “I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian people’s belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.”

Bearing witness may not be enough, but it’s a start.