Sen. Inhofe: Basis for Senate's Ban on Drudge Report Was Bogus, We Encourage People to Visit Drudge
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
By Nicholas Ballasy, Video Reporter
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/62538(CNSNews.com) - “We would encourage people to continue to use Drudge. That’s a great source,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R.-Okla.) told CNSNews.com Tuesday after his staff on the Environment and Public Works Committee received an email informing them that the Senate Sergeant at Arms believed the Drudge Report and whitepages.com had been responsible for infecting Senate computers with viruses and advising Senate personnel not to visit the Web sites
When CNSNews.com asked Inhofe if there was any evidence that a virus had gotten into Senate computers as a result of people visiting Drudge, Inhofe said: “None, whatsoever.” Inhofe is the ranking Republican member of the Environment and Public Works Committee.
The Drudge Report itself posted a report on Tuesday debunking the Senate Sergeant at Arms’ claim and stating that the Web site had clocked almost 30 million page views on Monday without a single reader complaining via email that the site had transmitted a virus.
The office of the Sergeant at Arms did not respond to inquiries from CNSNews.com, but backed down from its claim about the Drudge Report on late Tuesday afternoon when it sent out a follow-up email warning about viruses that made no mention of Drudge
Several Senate offices were sent the initial e-mail late Monday saying the Sergeant at Arms thought the Drudge Report and whitepages.com were responsible for a rash of viruses appearing on Senate computers. “Please try to avoid drudgereport.com and whitepage.com websites for now,” said the email received by staffers on the Environment and Public Works Committee. “SAA [Sergeant at Arms] believes these two websites are responsible for the many viruses popping up throughout the Senate.”
The follow-up email sent out by the Sergeant at Arms’ office late Tuesday afternoon did not mention Drudge but said: “Our Information Security Operations Center has observed a significant increase in the number of Senate computers infected by fake security software that is malicious and does nothing to secure online information.”
Sen. Inhofe said it did not surprise him that someone on the left was trying to stop Senate staff from reading Drudge “because Drudge comes out with really good stuff and we want them to access the Drudge Report. We’re on the Drudge Report about half the time.”
“Every time there is something really noticeable and that somebody needs to cover, Drudge is right there,” said Inhofe. “I suspect somebody was trying to make it look as if there’s a virus there to discourage people from using Drudge. Then, somehow, I guess someone in the Capitol got a hold of it and said, yes, we are advising you not to use it
“Just today, they backed down, so I think that maybe we were right all the time and that there’s not a problem, and we would encourage people to continue to use Drudge,” he said. “That’s a great source.”
A source at the Environment and Public Works Committee told CNSNews.com that other Senate offices had received the e-mail with the warning not to visit the Drudge Report.
Sen. Inhofe said he believed there were some liberals who would prefer that people not see some of the information disseminated by Drudge.
“You have to remember, it was Drudge who started the whole Monica Lewinsky thing and that ended up being right,” Inhofe told CNSNews.com. “I can name a lot of things that Drudge found out about first, so let’s just give him the opportunity to keep working and that way we learn a lot quicker by having access to the Drudge Report. However, the liberals, the extremists, they don’t want the information that he has because he’s a man of truth and most of them don’t want the truth.”
