This may be a bit like a stream of consciousness rant, but I figure it has to be made.
Criminalizing Politics is such an absurd and false way to describe the Plame case.
There is no politics involved with the outing of a covert CIA operative. There is no politics involved with digging up this information to try and smear someone who you dislike. There isn't an exception to the laws of this nation that says "You can break this law if somebody makes you mad"
Criminalizing Politics is not the right phrase.
Criminalizing Crime is the right phrase.
Outing covert CIA operatives is not politics, it's a crime.
Conspiring to do that is a crime.
It is not politics, it is criminal. No matter how cynical you can be, there is a clear difference.
(more in the body)
Just because politicians do something doesn't automatically make it politics. Nixon sending people to break into the office of Daniel Ellsburg's psychitarist was not politics, it was a crime. Nixon sending people to break into the DNC headquarters in the Watergate was not politics, it was a crime.
The wail of an indicted Republican politician is almost always "It's just pola-ticks! I swear!", no matter what the case. (They don't have a problem with mistakes and crimes, only with the revelation of mistakes and crimes, such as after the Hurricane and in Abu Ghraib)
The fact is that Patrick Fitzgerald isn't aiming to criminalize politics, he is seeking to find who may have committed a crime and get those people put on trial and punished.
The Republican ants are under a magnifying glass, and they aren't in this predictament for any political reason. They are under the glass because they are suspected of committing a serious crime. A serious crime which has compromised our intelligence efforts and possibly lead to the death of at least one CIA officer (someone has the link to that story, I would guess, if you want more infor on it).
Criminals, especially ones who commit crimes like this, deserve to be identified and punished accordingly, no matter the party of the person.
That isn't criminalizing politics, it's criminalizing criminal action, and it's the right thing to do.
Apologies if this lacked vital content, or the current cliches of the diaries that get put out on this site, but it had to be shouted.