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.

Fake News creator, who believed he helped get Donald Trump elected, found dead in Arizona.

Courtesy of the New York Post:  

Paul Horner, who penned debunked articles about Bill Murray running for president and President Barack Obama opening a Muslim museum, was discovered unresponsive in his bed Sept 19. 

There were no signs of foul play, according to the Maricopa County medical examiner, and there was evidence the death could be due to an “accidental overdose.” 

During the 2016 presidential election, Horner created a list of websites that appeared to be legitimate news sites to spread false information. 

One article that claimed protesters who disrupted Donald Trump rallies were paid $3,500 went viral on the internet and fueled endless rumors about the alleged conspiracy. 

Despite the fact that no evidence existed, Trump repeated the charge about the paid protesters while on stage during one of his rallies. 

Horner told the Washington Post last November that although the information was clearly fabricated, he made thousands of dollars each month from them because Trump’s supporters were “easy to fool.” 

In the same interview, Horner said he thought Trump won the White House because of him.

Man I am not going to go all Alex Jones here, but damn this is convenient. 

Horner was the face of 2016 fake news, but he was by no means alone.

Without the Russians helping to push his fake news stories, and without Donald Trump himself actually repeating at least one of them to his audience, he would have had virtually no impact at all. 

This guy made "thousands of dollars each month." Let me tell you, THAT is not easy to do.

In order to pull that off you have to have a lot of help from others who also want your articles to be spread far and wide.

And now that this guy is gone, I have a feeling that this is one investigative channel that is going to be a lot harder to explore.

Damn, I did go a little Alex Jones there, didn't I?

Justice Antonin Scalia found dead! Update!

Courtesy of the San Antonio Express News: 

Associate Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead of apparent natural causes Saturday on a luxury resort in West Texas, federal officials said. 

Scalia, 79, was a guest at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, a resort in the Big Bend region south of Marfa. 

According to a report, Scalia arrived at the ranch on Friday and attended a private party with about 40 people. When he did not appear for breakfast, a person associated with the ranch went to his room and found a body.

Well holy crap!

I knew these old guys would start dying off soon, but I kind of thought it might happen in the NEXT administration.

This is going to be a quite the game changer.

Yes I realize I should probably express some sympathy here, but the guy WAS 79 years old, and he WAS Antonin Scalia, so the best I can do is give my condolences to his family.

Update: Yep this is going to go as we expected.

Courtesy of HuffPo:

It took only a few minutes after news broke of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's death on Saturday for conservatives to demand that Senate Republicans block any replacement nominated by President Barack Obama. 

It took just a little while more for Republican leadership to agree with them. 

In a swift statement designed to warn Barack Obama against even nominating a replacement, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) pledged to sit on his hands for the remaining 11 months of the president's term. 

"The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice," the statement read. "Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President."

I have been saying for months how important it is to elect a Democrat to the White House to appoint Justices for the opening sure to come in the next eight years. 

Justice Scalia's death has now driven that point home.

No more screwing around, it's time to get serious.

Yesterday President Obama visited Oregon to meet with the survivors and family of the victims of that shooting last week. And yes there were protesters.

Courtesy of CNN: 

A week after a gunman killed nine people and himself at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, President Barack Obama met with survivors and grieving families behind closed doors on Friday. 

"There are gonna be moments as we go forward where we're gonna have to come together and figure out how do we stop things like this from happening," Obama said in brief remarks after meeting with families. "I've got very strong feelings about this because when you talk to the families you are reminded this could be your child ... or your mom or your dad or your relative or your friend." 

Even before the President set foot in Oregon on Friday, news broke of two other campus shootings — leaving one dead and three wounded at Northern Arizona University, as well as one dead in an apartment complex near Texas Southern University.

This was the President's attempt to express his sorrow at these seemingly constant tragedies and to reinforce his commitment to getting something done about it.

So as you might imagine the Ammosexuals responded aggressively:  

Gun-toting protesters gathered on Friday morning to await President Obama's arrival in Roseburg, Ore., where he planned to meet with the families of victims of last week's mass shooting at Umpqua Community College. 

But local residents planned to protest Obama's visit, saying he rushed to "politicize" the tragedy by pushing a gun control agenda. 

"My family, my friends, everybody down here is not happy about him coming," Michelle Finn, a Umpqua alumna and Roseburg native, told the Oregonian. "He already says he's going to politicize this — he's already going to push his agenda."

Yes he is going to politicize this because it is through politics that gun laws are beefed up.

We had three different shootings on three different college campuses yesterday, leaving nine injured and two dead. And yet people are blaming everything except the easy access to firearms.

At this point there does not seem to be any middle ground for reasoning with these people.

Update: It looks like Obama is considering doing something on his own about background checks, without involving the Republicans.

Hell why not? It's not like they could hate him any more.

Man had 1,200 guns and two tons of ammunition. Died anyway.

Courtesy of Mediaite: 

The Los Angeles Police Department is looking into the death of a man whose decomposing body was found in his car just a short drive away from his Pacific Palisades condo. When authorities looked around his house, however, they were astonished to find that the deceased was packing some serious heat. 

The L.A. Times reported that LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith was “staggered” to find approximately 1,200 guns and two tons of ammunition inside the man’s house and garage. Officers found that many of the guns still had their packaging and price tags, and the mint-condition pieces ranged from handguns, to shotguns, to sniper rifles. 

“Our truck couldn’t carry it all,” Smith said. “We had to go back and make another trip.”

Here is more from NBC Los Angeles: 

"The boxes of ammunition were out behind the garage and they were just lots of them, piled at least 8-feet tall, and the pile just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger," said a neighbor, who did not want to be identified. 

Police were trying to determine the origin of the guns and whether they were legally being kept at the home.

And even more from the LA Times:

Several neighbors said the man was known only as “Bob” in the local area and described him as a gun fanatic who claimed to have worked covertly for either the FBI or the CIA. His fiancée had lived in the town home on Palisades Drive for years, they said. 

“He'll say crazy things to people like he does night missions swimming to Catalina,” said one neighbor, who declined to give her name, saying she was afraid. “He would come … and tell us he would show us self-defense moves.” 

Gee, I wonder what talk radio programs and cable news programs THIS guy watched?

In other news, escaped criminal Richard W. Matt has been located and killed by law enforcement. Well that's one.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

Richard W. Matt, one of the convicted murderers who staged an elaborate escape from New York’s largest prison nearly three weeks ago, was shot and killed on Friday by federal agents, two people with knowledge of the situation said. 

There was a report of a second episode of gunfire as law enforcement officers pursued David Sweat, the other inmate, according to the two people. Mr. Sweat’s fate was unclear. 

The shots were reported as law enforcement officers zeroed in on an area of remote terrain in Franklin County, near where investigators discovered evidence in two hunting cabins that indicated the missing inmates had been there. 

It marked a violent turn in a sprawling manhunt that began in Dannemora, N.Y., a village near the Canadian border, and soon spread to large swaths of the state after Mr. Sweat and Mr. Matt engineered a daring breakout from Clinton Correctional Facility.

You know usually I hope that law enforcement takes criminals alive, but fuck this guy, he is too damn dangerous to be out here with the rest of us and if he died in the attempt to capture him so be it.

Just in case you think I am exaggerating how dangerous this guy is check out the Wikipedia page on him: 

On December 3, 1997, Richard Matt attacked his 72 year old boss, William Rickerson, in his North Tonawanda home. After attacking him, and stopping to eat pepperoni and drink wine, Matt put Rickerson in his trunk and drove to New York. Matt was convinced Rickerson had large sums of money in his possession and demanded to know its location. At one point, Matt grasped the duct tape around Rickerson's hands and pulled it back, breaking his boss' fingers. Later, Matt snapped Rickerson's neck with his bare hands. He then dismembered the body and fled to Mexico to avoid capture.

Yeah like I said, fuck this guy. 

You know the thing about bulletproof vests is that they will not protect you if the bullet misses them. As dead Ammosexual learns the hard way.

Suspect Mark-Anthony Sandang Ramiro

Courtesy of WBALTV:  

A 30-year-old man has been arrested in the fatal shooting of a victim who was wearing a bulletproof vest and bragging he was about to take a "deuce deuce in the chest" in video recorded by a third person at the scene, according to court documents. 

Police said Mark-Anthony Sandang Ramiro was arrested and charged in the shooting death of Darnell Mitchell, 28, during an incident in Ramiro's basement at 2208 Cedley Street in south Baltimore on Wednesday. 

Police said the incident was filmed as Mitchell, who had been wearing a ballistics vest, was shot one time by Ramiro. The victim suffered a gunshot wound above the vest. 

According to court documents, police were called when Mitchell walked into the Shock Trauma with Ramiro around 4 a.m. Wednesday. Despite medical efforts, police said Mitchell was pronounced dead at 4:07 p.m. 

After getting a search warrant and processing the scene, police said they discovered a Cannon E07 digital camera with video on it of the shooting. 

In that video, Mitchell was bragging that he was about to take a “deuce deuce in the chest” -- a shot from a .22-caliber bullet -- before Ramiro, who is seen standing in front of Mitchell, discharged the handgun one time, striking Mitchell just above the vest, according to charging documents. 

The documents said Mitchell collapsed onto the floor and Ramiro dropped the gun. Ramiro and the person taking the video helped the victim, and then the video ended, according to court documents. 

You know you live disrespecting the power of the gun you die with suddenly new respect for the power of the gun.

This so-called "gun culture" is chock full of people who treat guns like they are simply accouterments or tools to be used to shoot in the air for celebration, or to open a locked door after losing the key, or to whip out to suddenly give the impression that they are a man. 

The facts are that these are deadly weapons designed and manufactured to end a life, and unless the individual with access to one does not treat it with great care and respect for its life ending power, the person whose life it ends will be either themselves or somebody they care about.

I wonder how this guy tested his bike helmet? Did he ride his bike into a brick wall at full speed?

So called "good guy with a gun" meets other good guys with guns, and badges. Does not end well for 2nd Amendment.

Courtesy of Dallas News:

Dallas police have confirmed that three officers shot and killed the homeowner who had fatally shot a burglar. 

Officers responded to a call in the 10300 block of Plummer Drive in Far East Dallas. Witnesses said they saw a homeowner shoot and kill Jerry Hale in the alley. The suspect was evidently trying to break into the homeowner’s residence. Police arrived to find the armed man standing over the burglar’s body in an alley, police said. 

They stopped an ambulance from entering the alley because the homeowner was still armed. Officers gave “loud verbal commands” to drop the gun. 

After he refused, they shot him multiple times, police said. He died from his injuries. The homeowner has not been identified.

Ten to one that the dead burglar was unarmed.

Look I completely support a homeowner defending their home, but I cannot help but wonder what makes it okay to kill a man who was in an alley behind that home?

And as for that whole "stand your ground" thing, well apparently standing that ground when the police are telling you not to is NOT going to work out in your favor. But you know, sometimes when you are holding a gun, you feel invincible.

Quote of the day.

Veteran ABC News reporter Sam Donaldson was giving an address at the University of Texas at El Paso, and was asked to comment on the future of Sarah Palin.

His response?

"I don't speak ill of the dead."

Oooh, that's going to result in a few dings in that Wasilla refrigerator tonight!

Phone hacking whistleblower found dead. Uh oh, I don't like where this is going!

Courtesy of the Guardian:

Sean Hoare, the former News of the World showbiz reporter who was the first named journalist to allege Andy Coulson was aware of phone hacking by his staff, has been found dead, the Guardian has learned.

Hoare, who worked on the Sun and the News of the World with Coulson before being dismissed for drink and drugs problems, is said to have been found dead at his Watford home.

Hertfordshire police would not confirm his identity, but the force said in a statement: "At 10.40am today [Monday 18 July] police were called to Langley Road, Watford, following the concerns for the welfare of a man who lives at an address on the street. Upon police and ambulance arrival at a property, the body of a man was found. The man was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after.

"The death is currently being treated as unexplained, but not thought to be suspicious. Police investigations into this incident are ongoing."

Okay I am going to try not to be too conspiratorial here but...oh fuck it, this simply CANNOT be a coincidence!


They need to get somebody besides the local police involved in this investigation immediately, and make damn sure that any other journalitst involved in this investigation, and their sources, are provided protection.

I realize that it is possible that this guy took his own life, or succumbed to "natural causes," but at this point I think those are the LEAST likely scenarios.