Last night was a pretty comical night to watch MSNBC. I know, nobody watches MSNBC. Even their most highly rated show, Countdown, is beaten two or three to one in the ratings for that time period.

I watch Countdown occasionally. It’s humorous seeing a sportscaster doing the news.

The folks at MSNBC felt they had some “breaking” news last night: Senator Barack Obama’s personal passport information had been electronically accessed by three low-level “contract” employees at the State Department. Two of these employees have already been fired, and the third employee was disciplined with the investigation continuing.

Supposedly, well-known people have their personal data flagged and access is limited, so when someone accesses this information, an alarm is triggered notifying their superiors. This system apparently worked perfectly. The notification of Obama did not work so well.

So, for two hours we listened to MSNBC and their many “experts” tell us what probably happened. Of course, there’s the conspiracy theorists (helped by the Obama Campaign) telling viewers that the Bush Administration might have been responsible for this breach of privacy, or that it could be insiders working for McCain or Clinton. Nobody mentioned that Jason Bourne may have had something to do with it, but at any moment, I expected to hear that theory.

It was only briefly mentioned that it could just be the employees’ “curiosity.”

MSNBC is firmly behind Obama in his quest to become President. They have downplayed the issue with Rev. Wright. Some MSNBC broadcasters almost wet their pants with excitement when Obama gave his speech this week on race relations.

Last night MSNBC gave Obama two hours of coverage with the “breaking news banner” flying across the screen. Guest after guest appeared. I checked other channels, including CNN and FOX, and expected there to be a breaking news segment and that the networks would be breaking into regular coverage. FOX and CNN lightly covered it. Larry King was even interviewing Barack Obama. I expected the first question from Larry King to be about the passport issue. Instead King asked him about the Michigan and Florida issue with their primaries. Maybe it was not “Larry King Live” because I did not hear King ask him about the passport issue.

In today’s paper, I expected a front page, top of the fold story, with a headline in two inch letters. Instead, I saw a small 120-150 word story about it from the Associated Press, on the bottom of page two! It appears that other new sources are not so eager to tout Obama for President. At least not so openly like MSNBC. Maybe they are actually giving this issue the coverage it is due.

The State Department did screw this up by not letting Obama know about this security breach, which happened three times. It’s a violation of the Privacy Act. The first time it occurred was in early January. It appears that some lower level civil service manager tried to handle this at his/her level, probably not realizing what the repercussions could be. Supposedly, the high level managers, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, were not notified until a day or so ago. She has apologized to Sen. Obama for the contract employees reviewing his file without authorization.

MSNBC went over the top with their reporting of this event. It is apparent that the folks at MSNBC, especially Keith Olbermann of the show Countdown and Dan Abrams of the show, Verdict, want nothing more than for Obama to be the next President.

If nobody is watching MSNBC, will this work?