Still smarting from the Valerie Plame leak scandal, Republicans are jumping on another leak of classified information. Probably hoping that it will “balance” the Plame story or even get payback for it, they are charging in immediately on the fact that someone leaked the story that the U.S. has a network of secret prisons, mostly in Eastern Europe, where prisoners are taken and violated at will without the embarrassing thing with subversive organizations like the Red Cross sticking their nose in and seeing some evidence of the torture going on.

The thing is, Valerie Plame was working on finding terrorists who might be getting ahold of WMD; this was something that absolutely should have been kept secret. It was something we absolutely would want to keep going on, and if secrecy helped that, then absolutely. It is an excellent example of why “national security” secrecy is necessary. But the prison story? That’s the kind of secret that needs to be outed, when things are being done with our money and influence, in our name, that we don’t want to have done–or at least, most of us.

Then there’s the investigation the Democrats are calling for, into the manipulation of intelligence that led up to the Iraq War. This is the kind of violation that starts wars, saps our nation of strength, kills two thousand of our soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis, and gives our country a black eye on the world stage.

But the prison leak is what Republicans are now so hot about jumping on. With Valerie Plame and a real and damaging violation of our security, Republicans had to be dragged into starting an investigation months after the leak. The Republicans have been fighting to stop the Iraq War intelligence manipulation investigation for two years. But now, with a leak that is the type we actually need to have, the Republicans are on it in a flash. That’s one way you know they’re just trying to showboat, and distract attention from the other leak story, from another investigation we really need but they don’t want us to have.

But there’s wholesome irony here: according to Republican Trent Lott, it was probably a Republican senator who leaked the story. Oops! Gotta wonder if Frist and Hastert knew this when they demanded the investigation, or if this will lead them to try to quietly kill the call for Justice to look into this.

It certainly is not a good week for the White House, again. Bush himself claims they’re against torture, but now we hear of these secret prisons, and Cheney is trying to stop Congress and Senator McCain from passing a bill that would outlaw torture. Excuse me while I get out my dictionary and look up the expression “two-faced.”