The White House has tapped two D.C.-area techies to run the government's tech infrastructure. His CIO, Vivek Kundra, turned out to have a rap sheet. Now his CTO Aneesh Chopra, has a drug problem.

No, not that kind of drug problem. But Chopra, before getting named White House CTO, served as Virginia's secretary of technology. He made his name automating Virginia's healthcare industry. One of the specific achievements he was lauded for was getting the state's scattered doctors' offices and clinics to file electronic prescriptions. Web 2.0 fanboys love him. Sounds great, right?

Sure, until we heard that hackers had broken into a Virginia state drug-prescriptions database and are demanding ransom for more than 8 million patient records. A state official said the FBI was investigating. Chopra, as the state's tech boss, may not have configured the server personally — but he should have made sure something like this never happened.

An FBI investigation: Where have we heard that before? Oh yes, at Kundra's previous job. Before becoming White House CIO, Kundra ran Washington, D.C.'s Office of the Chief Technology Officer, which has been mired in a bribery scandal. He was briefly suspended, even though he hadn't been named as a target of the investigation.

The natural conclusion to draw: Obama's techie hires talk a good game. But when it comes to actually keeping our nation's servers safe from attacks within and without, they've fallen down on the job. President Change deserves better than a bunch of smooth-talking PowerPoint jockeys. He needs hackers, not hacks.