Whenever things start looking really bleak -- like prison-time bleak -- for conservatives, you can always count on them to trot out that timeworn old Nixon favorite: "You're just criminalizing politics! Waaaaaaah!!!"

As Jon Perr recently elucidated, this has become a favorite line of the right with increasing frequency.

Of course, I fully agree that the criminalization of politics is a problem that needs to be solved. And I think the way to solve it is to get the criminals out of politics.

After all, nothing criminalizes politics faster than criminals. If we don't want to be charging our politicians with crimes they've committed while in office, we shouldn't be electing politicians who commit them. Or condone them.

Now, with the release of the torture memos -- which let us see, once and for all, just how morally and ethically depraved the Bush administration decided to make us -- the wingnuts are upping the ante.

Now we're "criminalizing conservatism".

Of course, I fully agree that the criminalization of conservatism is a problem that needs to be solved ...