After watching the Democrats go nuts for the better part of weeks after their much-ballyhooed "Fitzmas" fizzled out with one indictment for perjury and obstruction of justice, the Republicans have decided to climb aboard the anti-leak bandwagon. Congressional leaders have now demanded investigations into the leak of an actual CIA operation to the Washington Post, which promises more subpoenas for reporters and plenty of headlines for a CIA that has been increasingly exposed as a political player for the Democrats during the Bush administration:

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee noted that the leak, which said the CIA-run prisons are used to interrogate terror suspects, could threaten national security.

"If accurate, such an egregious disclosure could have long-term and far-reaching damaging and dangerous consequences, and will imperil our efforts to protect the American people and our homeland from terrorist attacks," they wrote in a letter to the committee chairmen.

The note calls for a look into who made the leak, what damage was done to the United States and its partners in the war on terror, and whether the information was accurate.

The Washington Post reported last week, citing anonymous U.S. and foreign officials, that the CIA for the past four years has run a covert prison system that has included sites in eight countries. Details of the locations of the prisons, referred to as "black sites," are closely guarded among U.S. and foreign officials.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said the Republicans' call to investigate the leak was "only a play to the press, that's all this is."

Only a play to the press? Reid has to be joking. The Democrats have done nothing but play to the cameras since the Grinch stole their Fitzmas. First Reid unilaterally threw the Senate into a Rule 21 secret session for the first time in 25 years, ostensibly to discuss classified material but most obviously to grandstand after the Alito nomination threatened to steal media attention from Scooter Libby's indictment for not cooperating with a probe into an alleged crime that never took place. Yesterday Reid and Chuck Schumer, whose staffers still have not explained their felonious conduct in getting Michael Steele's credit report, held a press conference to air their demands that Bush not pardon Libby -- despite the lack of any suggestion that he might do so.

All of this foolishness arises from a leak of a CIA employee's name, who may or may not have been covert six or more years ago but has driven to Langley headquarters every day since then to perform analytical work -- when she isn't busy getting her husband plum assignments overseas so that he can launch political broadsides against the administration on his return. That has resulted in at least two Congressional investigations and a special prosecutor, none of which found any criminal problems except Libby's stupidity in trying to lie his way through his grand jury testimony.

Now we have a leak of an ongoing CIA operation involving the detention and interrogation of enemy prisoners during wartime -- and Reid considers a call for its investigation a PR stunt?

Talk about tone deafness! Reid provides another reason why the Tantrum Party has no business leading this country in their current state during a period where we find ourselves under attack by radical Islamists.

Hastert and Frist need to pursue this vigorously. The CIA seems strangely willing to interfere with civilian administration of the government during wartime, and it's about time we find out who seems to want to run a shadow government out of Langley.

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