The young man who guessed Sarah Palin's email password, and was jailed for it, has died.

The Palins leaving the courthouse in Knoxville, TN after lying to the jury.

Courtesy of the Daily Mail:  

The man who guessed the password on Sarah Palin's personal email account and posted details online when she was a nominee for vice president in 2008, died last week in California. 

David Kernell, 30, died of complications related to progressive multiple sclerosis (MS) late Friday or early Saturday, according to a statement his family released on Thursday.

His family shared that Kernell had been diagnosed with MS in 2014 and began participating in clinical research trials at the Cedars-Sinai Neurosciences Research Center in Los Angeles. He hoped to help develop cures and treatments for other victims of MS, the page-long statement detailed.

Despite what the Palins would have had you believe, Kernell was actually a very kind and giving individual.

'David did not let this incident define him,' the family said, according to Commercial Appeal. 

'He returned to UT Knoxville to complete his economics degree and further refined his programming skills by helping his local community. 

'He first volunteered his expertise to Tennessee Voices for Children, a child advocacy non-profit group. Later, he moved to California and worked to develop facial recognition software that could identify children at risk of abuse.' 

So he actually did something positive with his life, and DIDN'T just try to sell crappy diet products on the internet? 

I think everybody here knows the story of the then 20 year old easily guessing Palin's password and then anonymously bragging about it on the internet, which then led to Palin calling it "worse than Watergate" and taking Bristol to Tennessee to lie to the courts about being terrified even though at the time the Secret Service were patrolling their property in Wasilla.

This led to Kernell receiving a felony charge and spending 10 months of his short life behind bars, all for a college prank.

She tried to destroy this young man's life, as she has tried to destroy so many others before and after him.

And now he's dead.

Sarah Palin's political prisoner, David Kernell, is free!

"They let him out?"

Courtesy of WMCTV: 

Five years have passed since a Tennessee college student attempted to hack into former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's e-mail. 

U. T. Student David Kernell got a different kind of education: months in a federal prison camp, a halfway house, and supervised probation. All that has now ended. This comes to a close after his attorney filed a motion saying Kernell had paid enough for what the attorney described as a prank. 

"I think he learned his lesson," stated Kernell. Kernell's father, Mike Kernell, has been in the Tennessee legislature for 38 years. 

He described it as a "relief" that his son is now released from probation several months early and thanks the federal judge in Knoxville who made it possible.

Yeah that's bullshit!  What this kid did was NOT hacking, he was outwitting Sarah Palin, an entertaining exercise that has been been undertaken numerous times by television commentators, comedians,  Canadian radio hosts, me, and various others over the last five years.

What he did was a prank. It may have been an invasive one, and a poorly considered one, but it was still JUST a prank. NOT an incident of hacking.

The ONLY reason that this involved jail time for young Mr. Kernell is because he had dared to poke the Grizzled Mama and she felt the need to roar her terrible roar, gnash her terrible teeth, roll her terrible eyes, and show her terrible teeth. But in the end ALL it did was to temporarily imprison one young man and show the world what a vindictive bitch she is, and that he daughter will gladly lie on her behalf.  ("Living in he middle of nowhere" my ass!)

Both of which, by the way, are things we had already figured out BEFORE this case went to trial. 

So yes I think that David Kernell was a political prisoner, and I hope that now that he is out he can pursue the promising law career that was so rudely, and unnecessarily, interrupted, and someday sue the shit out of Sarah Palin and her family!

Though to be honest, by that time the whole tribe will probably be living in a van down by the river.

The government paid $2500 to fly Todd Palin to Knoxville, Tennessee to sit on his ass during a trial that sent David Kernell to prison for guessing his wife's Yahoo account password. Your tax dollars at work.

"Look, she says jump, I say how high."

Courtesy of the AP:

The government paid nearly $2,500 for Sarah Palin's husband to come to the trial of a Tennessee college student who hacked into her email — even though Todd Palin never testified, court records show. 

In all, the government paid more than $29,000 to fly members of the Palin family and other witnesses to Knoxville, send a prosecutor to Alaska for research and pay other travel expenses, according to the Department of Justice records obtained by The Associated Press through a Freedom of Information Act request. Air travel totaled about $18,600, and hotel bills amounted to nearly $3,300. 

The thousands of dollars spent by prosecutors helped them win a conviction on one felony and one misdemeanor charge against David Kernell, who finishes his 10-month sentence on Wednesday. Prosecutors have said that Kernell's punishment for the hacking during Palin's failed 2008 vice presidential bid should deter any hackers who considered targeting candidates in next fall's presidential election. 

The former Alaska governor, her daughter Bristol and an aide were among the witnesses called to the stand, but the chief prosecutor said he decided Todd Palin's testimony wasn't needed. Sarah and Bristol Palin told jurors that they felt harassed and their lives were disrupted after Kernell hacked into Sarah Palin's Yahoo! email account and made screenshots public that included personal email addresses and cell phone numbers. 

Records show Todd Palin received $2,244.30 as reimbursement for airfare from Alaska to Tennessee, along with $122 for meals and incidentals and an attendance fee of $120. He was listed as a fact witness. 

"We subpoena a lot of witnesses that we think we might need," Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Weddle said, adding that about a dozen witnesses in all were subpoenaed. "We decided his testimony was no longer necessary for purposes of trial."

So let me get this straight.

The Us Attorney thought he MIGHT want to put Toad on the witness stand, but then later on decided he did not need his testimony? You know usually I would buy that, but THIS is a family that is famous for milking the government for all kinds of travel and hotel expenses, even going so far as to charge the state of Alaska to have Sarah Palin sleep in her own bed.

Something smells fishy here, and it is NOT just the Grizzled Mama's unwashed "ambiance."

So is it normal to fly family members to a trial at government expense and not have them testify? 

J. Tom Morgan of Decatur, Ga., a former district attorney, said that when former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis made a comment about sunshine as the best disinfectant "he wasn't talking about the federal court system." 

"It sounds like a lot of money on a hacking case, but once you go to trial you've got to be prepared for anything and everything," he said. Morgan said prosecutors have discretion in spending and typically if they have a family member tag along they will also have them testify to justify it. 

Though Morgan couldn't speak to the circumstances of the Palin case, he said sometimes family members do get a "free ride."

A "free ride" boy doesn't THAT sound familiar?

I'm sorry, perhaps I am just overly jaded from dealing with this family of unconscionable grifters, but this feels to me as yet ANOTHER incident where Sarah Palin, and her band of Wasillabillies, fucked our government out of more of our hard earned tax dollars.

And they did it while lying on the witness stand about the impact Kernell's guesswork had on their family which cost this young man a year of his life.

In my mind at least our tax dollars were NOT used to pursue the cause of justice.

Palin e-mail "hacker" transferred to halfway house, will finish his sentence on November 23rd.

Courtesy of PC World:

David Kernell left a fenceless minimum-security federal prison in Ashland, Kentucky, where inmates are put to work on landscaping and building maintenance for between 12 and 40 cents per hour for the halfway house, according to a Tennessee television station. 

Kernell was convicted last year of breaking into to Palin's Yahoo e-mail account during the 2008 presidential election. He outsmarted Yahoo's password reset system by correctly answering questions using information about Palin that was easily available on the Internet -- a technique that criminals continue to use to break into those accounts. 

Apparently it took Kernell minutes to look up her birth date, ZIP code, and where she met her husband Todd (Wasilla High School). When they don't make any money from the crime, it's unusual for first-time hackers with no criminal records to get a prison sentence, but Kernell's case wasn't exactly typical. Palin and her eldest daughter Bristol testified during the trial, and prosecutors argued that a stiff sentence would deter further hacking during presidential elections.

This is, of course, a complete travesty of justice. And just another example of how the Palins leave a path of destruction wherever they go.

The ONLY reason that this kid, who by the way did not "hack" anything, was given such a stiff sentence was because Sarah and Bristol perjured themselves when asked what kind of impact the guessing of the password to the Yahoo account had on their lives.

The simple truth would have been that Sarah was freaked out that the world had discovered what an imbecile she was to use private Yahoo accounts to conduct state business, but THAT was glossed over in the testimony.

As I said back in April of 2010, Palin was extremely lucky that the person who guessed her password information was just some harmless college kid pulling a prank and NOT some political operative or foreign spy looking to find some damaging information on Palin that they could have used to REALLY hurt her, and potentially the people of Alaska.

Personally I hope that once David Kernell finishes his sentence that he gives a couple of interviews and tells people his side of the story, and how aggressively Sarah Palin worked to destroy his life in retribution for daring to reveal her ignorance.