Jumping to Conclusions on the Identity of the Palin Email Hacker

On Wednesday, Michelle Malkin published the contents of a 4chan.org thread in which someone with the handle “rubico” and the email address “rubico10@yahoo.com described how he broke into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account. Within hours, Michelle’s readers had linked that email address to David Kernell, the 20-year-old son of democrat Mike Kernell, a Tennessee House Representative.

By this afternoon, the right side of the blogosphere was bubbling over with indictments of Kernell. Blog goers declared him guilty, and decreed jailhouse rape the only acceptable punishment. Reports that the feds in Memphis were investigating spawned even more excitement among bloggers.

But did David Kernell hack Sarah Palin’s email?

Perhaps. And maybe that statuesque blond chick you met online isn’t really a 67-year-old grandfather.

The answer is that we have no idea who we’re dealing with on the Internet. The “rubico” who posted on 4chan could be David Kernell or it could be his jilted ex-girlfriend or an unsupervised 12-year-old who randomly chose Kernell’s online identity to hide behind. We just don’t know.

One has to wonder why David Kernell would post his email address on the 4chan board where posting anonymously is expected, and even encouraged. Am I the only one surprised by that?

The speed and decisiveness with which the Internet mob concluded that David Kernell is the culprit in the hacking of Sarah Palin’s email makes me extremely uncomfortable. It’s entirely possible that he’s guilty, but at this point, the evidence is far from conclusive. One way or another, I hope he can aid in the investigation.

Now let’s wait and see what the feds have to say.

September 18, 2008 · Filed Under Sarah Palin

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Sarah Palin’s Email Shows She’s Squeaky Clean

By now you’ve heard that some lowlife stole Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email password, broke into her account, and posted screenshots for the world to see. The bloodthirsty lefty piranhas began circling, waiting for Sarah Barracuda to go belly up, but it turns out they won’t be feasting on Palin this time.

As it turns out, Sarah Palin has nothing to hide.

There’s not a shred of evidence that her personal email account contained anything damning – not so much as a dirty joke or unusual grocery list. I won’t send traffic to the pages that have screenshots of Sarah Palin’s account, but if you’re interested, they’re easy enough to find via Google.

Someone claiming to be the one who broke into Palin’s account posted a lengthy explanation on the /b/ board at 4chan.org, the board where the screenshots originally surfaced. The message has since been deleted, but Michelle Malkin has the text, which includes the following:

I read though the emails… ALL OF THEM… before I posted, and what I concluded was anticlimactic, there was nothing there, nothing incriminating, nothing that would derail her campaign as I had hoped, all I saw was personal stuff, some clerical stuff from when she was governor…. And pictures of her family

Of course, that didn’t stop Gawker from publishing the screenshots of Palin’s account. The Huffington Post followed Gawker’s lead, as did Daily Kos where this incident was the subject of at least 11 diaries. The Associated Press got in on the reprehensible behavior by refusing to comply with the Secret Service’s request for assistance with their probe into the leaked emails.

Predictably, the dregs of the left at HuffPo are proclaiming this a Rovian plot to get rid of troopergate evidence. Yawn.  Others are calling the leaked emails damaging proof that she used a personal email account to conduct government business.  Double yawn.

I wonder, will hungry piranhas cannibalize each other when denied a meal?

September 18, 2008 · Filed Under Sarah Palin

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Crap! Sarah Palin Linked to 1980s Killing Spree

Following numerous laughable attempts by the hollow-headed left to link Sarah Palin to nefarious types like Osama bin Laden and white supremacists, someone finally has the dirt on the Alaskan governor and it ain’t pretty.

Here’s just a taste of what’s been pieced together about Palin’s sinister background:

One must wonder if George Orwell would have seen the irony in Palin winning the Miss Wasilla Pageant, for it happened, of course – in 1984, only a few miles from a local animal farm. Eerily, this is the same year that Richard Ramirez, also known as the Night Stalker, claimed his first victim. Whether Palin was in contact with Ramirez at the time cannot be verified, but when Palin finished second runner-up in the Miss Alaska pageant, it is unlikely that the outcome sat well with either of them. Few experts know what drives serial killers to kill serially – but later, Palin winning the “Miss Congeniality” award, must have been icing on the cake.

A very deadly cake, one might add. With murderous frosting. Made of death.

And murder.

Read all about Sarah Palin’s Murderous Web of Death at The Daily Gut. It’s also at HuffPo, but I’ve sent them enough traffic this week.

September 15, 2008 · Filed Under Sarah Palin

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Dear Jong

This weekend feminist author Erica Jong published a “Dear John” letter addressing John McCain. Among other things, she called Sarah Palin a racist. This is my response.

Dear Jong,

Erica, on Saturday I read your HuffPo piece, Not That Stupid: Erica Jong’s Dear John Letter, in which you label Sarah Palin a racist for cutting funding to black teen mothers, and I wanted to tell you you’re right. You’re right that American women are “not that stupid.” Most of us don’t buy it when you try to peddle your fictions as fact.

Calling Sarah Palin an anti-feminist racist was nothing more than an amateurish attempt to advertise to the world how progressive you are. Perhaps circulating that lie was some sort of perverted apology to black Americans for the white privilege that plagues you so?

Erica, I understand you’re a 9/11 truther, so facts may not interest you, but I’d like to set the record straight for any of your readers who happen upon this letter.

“Cutting funding for black teenage mothers is anti-feminist and racist,” you wrote.

The myth that Sarah Palin slashed funding to teen mothers arose from a Washington Post report about government money allocated to Covenant House Alaska, an organization that happens to run a home for teenage moms. As I’m sure you already know, that smear has been thoroughly debunked.

Sarah Palin actually increased Covenant House funding by more than three times, from 1.3 million dollars in 2007 to 3.9 million in 2008. The state of Alaska will be phasing in further support for a capital project Covenant House has undertaken.

The notion that Sarah Palin somehow directly targeted black teenage mothers is truly absurd. Even if Governor Palin had cut the Covenant House budget (which she didn’t), African-American clients made up just 11 percent of the youth they served in 2007 (PDF). Perhaps, Erica, you decided otherwise when you looked at the Covenant House Web site. A photo of a black teen must mean all of their clients are black, right?

Or maybe you simply made it up.

Did you think spreading lies about racism was funny? Did you try convince yourself you were working in the interest of “the greater good”? Or were you trying to soothe your guilty conscience by publicly coming to the “defense” of black people?

Racism is alive and well in America, and there’s a filthy trail of it leading right to your wretched heart. Next time you decide to write something, Erica, we’ll tell you thanks, but no thanks.

Jenn Q. Public

September 15, 2008 · Filed Under John McCain, Liberal Absurdity, Misogyny, Racism, Sarah Palin

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Letters to Charlie Gibson

A 500 character letter to Charlie Gibson, inspired by Jim Treacher’s much wittier effort:

Mr. Gibson,

Thank you for attempting to expand my definition of journalism during your interview with Sarah Palin. I was not aware that deliberate distortion and misrepresentation were acceptable practice in your field.

I’m sure you and your editing team appreciated the opportunity to do your jobs unencumbered by professional ethics. Principles can be so limiting to a journalist’s creativity.

By the way, your credibility called: it won’t be coming home. Ever.

Good luck in your new career.

Submit your own “Dear Charlie” letter at ABC.

If Sean Hannity is right that 2008 will be remembered as “the year journalism died,” Charlie Gibson may go down in history as the one who dug it up and violated its rotting corpse one last time.

September 13, 2008 · Filed Under Media Bias, Sarah Palin

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Bristol Palin and the Omniscient Media

If I had a swing state vote for every pundit, reporter, columnist, and netizen who presumes to know the secrets of 17-year-old Bristol Palin’s sex life, I could win this election for the McCain/Palin ticket. Give me another vote for every kitchen table pundit decrying Sarah Palin’s views on birth control and sex education, and we’d have a landslide of historic proportions.

Bristol Palin “had unprotected sex with her boyfriend and took the risk of getting pregnant,” the editor-in-chief of Seventeen tells us. She was failed by abstinence-based sex ed that gives “teenagers as little practical information as possible,” asserts Joan Smith. Her “predicament” is likely due to the state of sex ed in our “puritanical society,” says NYT columnist Charles Blow. “They don’t sell Trojans in Alaska?” scoffs Dave Letterman. And Kos reveals his intimate knowledge of Bristol Palin’s birth control practices with this gem: “Bristol would’ve been better served with a discussion about safe sex. Instead, she’s now facing a shotgun wedding to the baby’s father.”

But how many of these people were there the night Bristol conceived?

That’s right, not one.

Not one of them knows whether Bristol Palin and her fiancé were practicing safe sex and not one of them knows whether the couple received comprehensive sex education.

That’s not what the liberal media would have you think. They know what happened because they know what kind of people the Palins are. Only their bible-thumping, Christianist ways, complete with abstinence-only education and a prohibition on contraception, could have caused a teen girl to get pregnant.

And that, of course, is a crock.

Sarah Palin is pro-contraception and approves of sex ed. She does not favor explicit sex education, but supports an approach that discusses both abstinence and contraception, including condoms.

Sarah Palin’s (fairly moderate) views on sex ed and birth control are fair game for the “keep your laws off my body” crowd. Bristol Palin’s sexual experiences are not, and concocting fictions in the absence of details only makes the barrage of opinion from the MSM and blogosphere more unseemly.

September 11, 2008 · Filed Under Liberal Absurdity, Sarah Palin

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