TWO SCANDALS EXPOSE HOW SINISTER IS THE LIBTARD MEDIA

Two stories dominated the news this week. One is really, really important. The other is frivolous. Of course, the news media focused more attention on the frivolous story.

Hackers stole sensitive information from databases of the Office of Personnel Management on 4 to 14 million federal employees, who now could have their identities stolen, or worse.

One hack began last December, was discovered in April by a private contractor. Another, larger hack apparently began in March of last year.

The hackers were Chinese, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said after receiving a classified briefing.

This was a cyber Pearl Harbor which "wrecked American espionage," said John Schindler, a former counterintelligence officer for the National Security Council.  Actually, it was no real hack at all, but we’ll get to that.

Of foremost concern is the filching of SF86s, a 120-page form in which those seeking security clearances list sensitive information such as arrests, drug and alcohol problems, etc.

Covers of intelligence officers have been blown, those who confessed sins on their SF86 made subject to blackmail. Armed with info from the filched files, terrorists could target military personnel and their families.

Worse, the OPM hack "offers our adversaries the opportunity to penetrate our government and use that information to deceive it at a strategic level," Mr. Schindler said.

The news media gave more attention to Rachel Dolezal, who was president of the NAACP chapter in Spokane and a part time professor of Afro-American Studies at Eastern Washington University until her parents outed her as being 100 percent white.

She’s black because she feels black, Ms. Dolezal insists. Bizarre things she’s said suggest she isn’t playing with a full deck. In short, she’s full-bore nuts.

Conservatives chortle as liberals, who said Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner is a woman because he/she thinks he/she is, perform verbal somersaults to make pseudo-distinctions between him/her and Ms. Dolezal.

Nature makes mistakes. A few babies are born with crippling or disfiguring birth defects; a few with the psyche of one gender, the genitalia of the other. It’s (sort of) possible now for surgeons to fix what Nature screwed up. But Mr./Ms. Jenner has yet to have a sex change operation. He’s still Bruce, not Caitlyn.

We’re entitled to our own opinions. But our opinions are worthless if they aren’t grounded in fact. Ethnicity and gender are biological facts that are not altered by our whims  — no matter how pathologically liberal pretend otherwise.

The news media devoted more attention to the trivial story in part because we, the people, found it easier to follow, and more amusing.

Once, journalists told us what we needed to know as well as what we liked to hear. That doesn’t happen much these days, in part because many journalists have difficulty following complex stories too. It’s easier to write about Rachel Dolezal than about the implications of a cyber Pearl Harbor.

There’s another, truly sinister reason.

The OPM hacks were facilitated by mind-boggling negligence. OPM’s management was warned repeatedly over the last 8 years of glaring weaknesses in their information security programs. Last November OPM’s inspector general urged that a particularly vulnerable system be shut down. Had it been, a breach would have been prevented.

But nothing was done. Negligence by OPM Director Katherine Archuleta et. al. was so stupefyingly massive the Chinese didn’t even need to "hack" the systems at all, because they’d obtained valid user identifications and passwords, Dr. Andy Ozment, Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity for the Department of Homeland Security, told the House Oversight Committee Tuesday (6/16).

The hackers got the credentials that gave them "the run of the system" through social engineering, Dr. Ozment said. 

"Social engineering" is an info-techie term for "someone gave them the password," says Richard Fernandez of the Belmont Club.

That someone likely was one of the private contractors OPM hired to help it manage internal data. One of the contractors was located in China.

"The contractors who build the digital systems for the federal government… exist only because their business model is to serve the federal government," says Michael Brendan Dougherty. "The primary business plan of these companies is to jump through insane bureaucratic hoops, then certify that they have done so to get contracts.

"That means they are primarily creatures who exist to navigate and satisfy regulatory hurdles, not to deliver ‘amazing products’ that ‘just work.’ For that you have to go to Silicon Valley proper, and even they outsource much of the hard work to China," Mr. Dougherty said.

"OPM’s data security posture was akin to leaving all your doors and windows unlocked and hoping nobody would walk in and take the information," said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-UT, chairman of the Oversight Committee.

Ms. Archuleta should resign, said Rep. Chaffetz along with other Members of the committee. She declined even to apologize for the security lapses, which she blamed on the previous administration.

It’s worth noting here that Ms. Archuleta has no computer or technological expertise whatever, zero.  She’s nothing more than an affirmative-action bureaucrat promoted out of "diversity" (she’s Latina).

The gross negligence of OPM’s managers – and the president’s unwillingness to hold them accountable – is a national security scandal of astronomic proportions. Which is why his aides say this is no big deal.

And is chiefly why reporting on the OPM "hack" has been pathetically inadequate. Many in the media think it more important to protect Democrats than to inform Americans of what’s going on. They spin, downplay or ignore news that makes Democrats look bad.

Most Americans are blissfully unaware that Homeland Security released thousands of illegal immigrant violent felons into our communities; of dysfunction in nearly every federal agency; of alarm over mounting debt –and of the causes and catastrophic consequences of the gargantuan national security blow we’ve just suffered.

It isn’t reality that matters, liberals think. It’s how we feel about things. Eventually, reality stomps on such childish notions. When it does, it’s the job of journalists to tell us about it. But they’re just as childish as all other liberals.  And Lying Swine to boot.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret, and was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force during the Reagan Administration.  He is the national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

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