I don't know that it is treason per se. I'm not a lawyer.
I do know that if they have legitimate and urgent concerns with our intellegence collection that would require an independent investigation, and they're deliberately delaying this probe so they can use it as a tool to win an election, they're engaged in far more than simple partisanship.
I'd be 100% for their activities if they planned to launch the investigation immediately. What turns this whole thing sour is that they couldn't give a damn about the issues in and of themselves, they only care about the potential club they can wield against Bush.
I don't know what your background is. I've worked in the intel field for my entire adult life, and I closely associate the words 'intelligence failures' with the words 'dead bodies'. We're not talking about a sex scandal that the opposition party is going to uncover to smear an opponent. We're talking about people's lives, people who have died and people who can still be saved.
If that's the going definition of partisanship these days, we're heading down a very dangerous path.
They are planning for the probe to start early next year, which is probably the earliest possible start date. If they wanted to influence the election, then they would have the probe next fall.