The first story was about the Bush administration’s actions to muzzle the Press by prosecuting reporters and their sources (government whistleblowers) for violations of the Espionage Act.

The administration of President George W. Bush is mounting an unprecedented effort to crack down on leaks of government secrets, even as it is vastly expanding the range of information deemed too sensitive to share with the public.

That twin effort has raised fears that the White House may succeed in shutting off the flow of such information by threatening to jail those who leak secrets and those who receive them. […]

Many see the case, which relies on a novel interpretation of a 90-year-old espionage law, as a test of whether the administration can exercise new powers to shut off leaks that have been severely embarrassing to the White House. In particular, the Justice Department is aggressively trying to identify the sources for two explosive news stories: the existence of secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons in eastern Europe, and the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance programme.

The Washington Post reported at the weekend that dozens of officials from both agencies had been questioned recently by the FBI in the leak investigations.

“When you have more and more information being classified, and more and more secrets being kept, the only way reporters can get information is when internal whistleblowers provide it. And that drives this administration crazy,” says Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Craig Crawford, a recurring guest commentator on Countdown was on to discuss this matter with Keith. You could tell from what each of them was saying, and from their body language and tone of voice, that both were clearly distressed by this story. Unfortunately, the transcript for last night’s show is not yet up, or I’d give you the exact words of the dialogue between the two of them.

Suffice it to say that they were both sounding alarm bells for our Constitution, and particularly for the seeming death of the First amendment freedoms which are the fundamental basis for our democracy. Freedom of the Press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly — all being flushed down the toilet by the Republican Party.

I’ve never seen Olbermann quite so despairing. The cynical edge he always employs was in full force, but it was dampened by his openly stated realization that Bush and the Republican controlled Congress are suppressing our Nation’s few remaining sources of dissent, with nary a peep from most of the media or the public.

And Craig Crawford, usually so full of snark expressed with his peculiar brand of over-the-top bonhomie, was unusually somber. Whenever I’ve watched him appear on Countdown before, he’s always played the jokester with Keith, but last night you could tell he was clearly too worried and too concerned about what he sees happening to our free press to evoke his usual persona of detached sarcasm. The jokes were few, and no one was laughing, least of all Keith and Craig.

It had the appearance of two desperate men facing the gallows. It was hard for me to watch. It must be difficult to be the only sane newsman on broadcast television these days. No one else on TV covers these stories of White House and Republican abuse as much as Keith does, nor is there any other news show like his that actually reports the reality of these various disasters rather than merely regurgitating the Republican spin.

So if you have time today, send Keith an email, and tell him how much we appreciate his show, and to keep fighting for us. Why? Because we need the guy more than ever.

Keith’s email: countdown@msnbc.com

Update [2006-3-7 10:27:27 by Steven D]: At the suggestion of Rick Oliver in the DKOS comments, please also contact MsNBC to let them know you support Keith and Countdown.

Email: feedback@msnbc.com

Webpage with other MsNBC contact info: LINK