“Keith is furious about the way this has all been handled and insisted that MSNBC bosses apologize to him before he would agree to return,” a network insider tells me. “Keith sees himself as the star of MSNBC, the person who put them on the map and discovered fellow network anchors Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell. To be treated like this by the network he helped shape, he considers disgusting.”

Until today MSNBC employees had to follow ethics guidelines clearly barring them from making political contributions. After Olbermann’s “indefinite suspension without pay,” it appears those rules may see some revision…

“Keith clearly won this battle. Not only has he got the bosses to say sorry but he’s also got the company to review its ethic rules,” a friend of Keith’s tells me. “You watch — his rating on Tuesday when he returns will be bigger than ever, giving him even more power at MSNBC.”