All signs point to state rep's son as Palin 'hacker'

The guy who hacked into would-be VP Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account is none other than the son of a Democratic state representative from Tennessee, posits GatwayPundit. A convincing amount of evidence suggests the "hacker" (perhaps a status he doens't deserve) is David Kernell, son of Tennessee representative Mike Kernell. The investigation is centered in Memphis, the Commercial Appeal reported:

An FBI and Secret Service investigation into the hacking, launched Wednesday, now involves agents in Memphis, said C.M. Sturgis, a spokesman for the Memphis FBI branch.

"All I can say is that a matter was referred to us from the Anchorage, Alaska, office. An investigation at this time is being coordinated out of FBI headquarters in the Department of Justice," Sturgis said.

• rubicon10@yahoo.com was the account of an unnamed college student, according to this Wired story. Wired identified the student as the son of a Democratic state representative in Tennessee. The father offered a non-denial denial.

  A person who identified himself as the student's father, when reached at home, said he could not talk about the matter and would have no comment. The father, in a second call with Threat Level late Thursday afternoon, said that neither he nor his son has been contacted by any law enforcement authorities. A local Tennessee paper had erroneously reported that his son had been contacted by authorities, he told Threat Level.

• Rep. Kernell offered an even-less convincing denial late yesterday afternoon in a story in the Knoxville News Sentinel:

  Asked whether he or his son, a student at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, had been contacted by authorities investigating the break-in of Palin's account, he responded: "Me, no." As far as his 20-year-old son, David, he said: "I can't say. That doesn't mean he has or hasn't (been contacted by investigators)." Kernell, D-Memphis, cited the father-son relationship.

  This article in the Tennessean adds little, with Kernell conceding that the Internet is talking about his son.
• Free Republic notes that rubicon changed Palin's password to "popcorn." Popcorn. Kernell.
• "The Alaksa division of the FBI has contacted the Memphis division and an investigation is under way," WREG-TV reports. Kernell also acknowledged that people are talking about his son but denied he had been contacted by the FBI.
• But if people are talking about David Kernell as the same person as rubicon10@yahoo.com and rubicon admitted that he he did it on 4chan, then the circumstantial evidence that David Kernell hacked Palin's account is pretty straight-forward, isn't it?
• Skirts, Not Pantsuits, a pro-Palin blog, asserts that this blog is linked to rubicon10@yahoo.com. I'm not sure how they established that. Indeed the entire site could be a prank. However, it does include this information, the dates line up and the depression wouldn't be unheard of:

  My name is David KernellI am 15 a white cacasian male i live in memphis, TN. My favorite and only hobby is chess, more like an obsession. I am not afraid to say that i have acute depression and have been institutionalized twice, one at th age of 9 in Texas and one this past year. I have been strugleing with this for my entire life and have finally come to the conclusion that being stoic in most of life's issues is of the untmost importance.

  Still, the Memphis Commercial Appeal established the chess connection, which lends credence to the blog's legitimacy:

  David Kernell excelled at chess while at Germantown High School and won the 2004 Tennessee Open Scholastic Chess Championship. Internet searches show someone uses the handle rubico on chess Web sites.