I visit Drudge several times a day. Never have I picked up any Spyware or browser Hijackers.
As far as browsers go, I have Netscape 4.7, Opera, Mozilla, IE and iRider all installed and used at one time or another. They've all been to Drudge Report one time or another. No program installations of any kind short of temporary Java stuff.
Pop-up ads and cookies are another matter. iRider is very effective with pop-up ads so I very rarely ever see one. Cookies are deposited on my machine by nearly every Web site I visit. I don't consider that much of an issue. I let Ad-aware and SpyBot clean those up every so often.
I do keep my MS security patches current along with Norton AV.