See also: Leaker named Reality confirms NSA report that Russia attempted actual election hack

Reality L. Winner is quite the new breed of traitor – the turncoat who dons the leaker's mantle and then uses classified information as a vehicle for partisan political purposes.

Just look at the details of her case – look at how the 25-year-old has no plans to contest the feds' facts about what she did.  Look also at how she chose a method of releasing the intelligence in a way that was easily traceable to her, too.  Who hires these people?

In the past, such a stance might have been a sign of stupidity and perhaps a plea deal in the works.  Nowadays, there's something far more precocious going on: probably plans to grandstand as a hero to the left, just as ISIS suicide terrorists seek to be heroes to jihadis.

The Justice Department released the affidavit in support of the charges, which indicates that she does not plan to contest the charges per se.

On June 3, 2017, your affiant spoke to WINNER at her home in Augusta, Georgia. During that conversation, WINNER admitted intentionally identifying and printing the classified intelligence reporting at issue despite not having a "need to know," and with knowledge that the intelligence reporting was classified. WINNER further admitted removing the classified intelligence reporting from her office space, retaining it, and mailing it from Augusta, Georgia, to the News Outlet, which she knew was not authorized to receive or possess the documents. WINNER further acknowledged that she was aware of the contents of the intelligence reporting and that she knew the contents of the reporting could be used to the injury of the United States and to the advantage of a foreign nation.

What it shows is that pretty much anyone can get a security clearance these days, suitable character or not.

It raises questions as to who vets these callow Millennial political activists now walking around with top-secret security clearances.  Yes, vetting is a time-consuming and laborious and unglamorous job – probably no path to advancement or promotion, and no doubt one that is so fraught with political correctness concerns that pretty much anyone with activist and grandstanding proclivities has nothing to worry about.

But we are talking about protecting the U.S. government, the establishment itself, not the rage against the establishment.  If someone is that angry at the establishment and has a vehicle to vent that rage, such as media organs willing to traffic in stolen information, it's not the establishment that is going to be protected.  It's going to get harvested to feed parasitical activism.

What's troubling is that bad precedents have already been set.  These temperamentally unfit people are making huge salaries and living the good life reading secrets the rest of us can't read in this national security establishment – witness the good life Ed Snowden lived in Hawaii with his pole-dancing girlfriend before he hotfooted it off to Russia, that bastion of libertarian freedoms, to lecture the U.S. on its lack of freedom.

And if they fail to escape the long arm of the law, they are not being seriously punished, not with the leftist media baying for their cause and declaring them political prisoners.

Witness the case of Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, the young punk who forked over U.S. secrets by the cartload to The Intercept just as the latest leak traitor, Winner, did.  Both are young, troubled Millennials with character problems and a fanatical desire to  engage in activism while ensconced in the establishment.  Did Manning suffer any real punishment for his leaking?  Not at all.  He got fame, fortune, a soapbox to air his miserable views, and the adoration of the left and some elements of the libertarian right.  He even got a free "sex change" operation, which he never would have been able to afford otherwise.

Why wouldn't there be other wannabe zeroes-to-heroes out there among the Millennials, who have no knowledge of the Cold War, the horrors of socialist oppression, or the reality that some powers out there want America dead and their own ascent assured?  They think, as V.S. Naipaul once noted, that there will always be this benign power and progress out there, chugging out medical advances, large salaries, lots of tech devices, sports equipment, and government freebies.  These Millennials have no sense of their country as having perimeters that must be guarded for that progress to flourish.  The only thing that matters to them is being snowflakes and putting that egotism to work through activist grandstanding.

Then we, the taxpayers who pay for these Millennials with such character flaws, get stiffed as our trust in them is misplaced.  Taxpayers shell out billions and billions to maintain an intelligence establishment, and all it takes is one snowflake with no fear of punishment to damage it severely.

Can this establishment be hosed out?  Maybe not, given the number of idiots who now have clearances through the national security establishment.  But surely these contractors, who hire anything and who are unable to instill a culture of national security first among their employees, can be sanctioned and their payments and profits cut.  Can there be new laws to enact that?  Something needs to be done to stop the bleeding of secrets to this new breed of leaker-traitors.