There's already an IDLE distribution distinct from Python's:
Note that the IDLE 0.5 there is not what was shipped with 1.5.2; I'm not clear on why that hasn't been updated to IDLE 0.6 already (suspect just lack of time).
Yes.
Hmm... I guess that I don't much have an opinion one way or the other, but was mostly looking for clarification.
I don't have a specific plan in mind either -- just "me too"ing on the idea that it would do no harm and possibly do real good to let these peripheral (to the core) things live on their own schedules. I don't see any harm in including "the latest" snapshot of them with the core distribution, though -- it's handy for newcomers to get these things without needing to search for them. I know I learned a lot about Python at the start from browsing these directories.
Additionally, it's great for Python on Windows to come with a working GUI. Pythonwin may be more like Windows, but it's much more fragile than (recent versions of) IDLE in my experience. --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)