The AP quotes Chuck Schumer as saying, "The investigation into leaks about a domestic spying program should determine whether the motivation was damaging security or revealing a potentially illegal activity."   And "There are differences between felons and whistleblowers, and we ought to wait 'til the investigation occurs to decide what happened."

This sounds good but let's inject some facts.   We have just seen the end of possibly the most politically partisan year during war in our nation's history.   Either there is nothing illegal in what the Bush administration's NSA did or every President since 1940 should have been impeached and removed from office.   That leaves only Chuckie's "damaging security" option although likely there is another.   How about the motivation was to gain politically by wrecklessly exposing something every president does while making it appear that only the self-righteous kingdom of Bush could possibly do.   Democrats are screwing with your personal security in order to gain power so they can promote a political agenda of gay marriage, increased minimum wage, teacher freedom so they can promote falsehoods about the environment and other liberal causes, take apart our military in order to fund entitlements, relinquish some national power to promote the band of thieves we often refer to as the United Nations, etc.

There are indeed differences between felons and whistleblowers.   Whistleblowers do not frequently go to the media but rather choose other venues.   They are often weak people who have few options available to them.   They are not Senators or Representatives who have a huge arsenal of possible weapons to expose anything which offends their sense of right and wrong.   Felons on the other hand often do stupid things for bad motivations such as gaining power at others', sometimes lots of others', expense.   It is looking more and more as if that is what we have here.   Let the investigation move forward rapidly.