Illegal Immigration, Absolutism, and Called As Seen

Called As Seen is a blog I've linked to many times, but somehow failed to add to my blogroll. It's there now, and I recommend you go there often. Today, Harold Hutchison comments on the general problem of conservative absolutism, on which I commented below.
[tags] Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame, Christopher Hitchens, Laura Ingraham, illegal immigration, earmakrs, Duke Cunningham, news leaks [/tags]
Harold also comments persuasively on the question of prosecuting federal leakers of national security information. He wonders why Duke Cunningham is in prison while other people (including a sitting U.S. Senator) are left unpunished despite having endangered American lives:

If Congress cannot be trusted to keep secrets, and if serious transgressions go unpunished, then Congress needs to face the consequences. I'm sorry, but I cannot get outraged over some Congressman's earmarks and bribes when others skate for leaking classified information.

Why isn't the Bush administration vigorously prosecuting these people? I suspect the answer is that doing so would be very costly politically. Think about it: Bush would be trying to jail the very people who make Pulitzer Prizes possible for those to whom those people leak information. The MSM, working with the Democrats, would unitedly paint Bush as Big Brother, Stalin, Hitler, and Jabba the Hutt all rolled into one. That doesn't mean Bush shouldn't prosecute the leakers, but I think it explains why he may be reluctant to do it.

Update: Speaking of leakers, today Christopher Hitchens drives what looks like the final nail in the coffin of the Joseph Wilson-Valerie Plame story.