Josh Marshall has been doing yeoman's work keeping ahead of all the clearly-false spin in the Rove/Plame investigation. John at AMERICAblog cited this paragraph, and added the emphasis:

And nothing was done amiss? If Rove et al. didn't do anything wrong, why have they spent two years lying about what they did? No law was broken? Then what is Fitzgerald looking at? Why is a grand jury investigating Rove? A prosecutor like Fitzgerald, a Republican appointee, wouldn't be throwing journalists in jail unless he thought he was investigating a serious crime.

The summary rhetorical question is, "Why would anyone spend two years investigating something he knows not to be a crime?"

The answer should be more obvious: Because that's what the GOP does. See, for example, 20 January 1993 through 19 January 2001. It would never occur to Rove and his political spawn to stop investigating an opponent simply because they knew there'd been no wrongdoing, so they can't imagine that anyone else would do so, either.

The only reason they haven't blamed Democrats for all of this is that the special prosecutor is a Republican - a choice they may have thought safe, but which now gives Fitzgerald all kinds of credibility that Ken Starr never had. Whenever Democrats mention inconvenient facts, like "treason is bad," Ken Mehlman and the other Roveniks immediately start crying "partisan politics!" But right now, that's as far as they can go.

If this heats up more, they'll go for the "partisan" attack anyway. This is the crowd that thought Watergate was just partisan politics and not about the illegal conduct of a President. They will never go quietly into any night; they will never stop plotting revenge against anyone in their way; they will sacrifice national security in a heartbeat to retain political power.

They're just getting warmed up.