It seems like an ‘Army of Davids’ may have tracked down the person who ‘hacked’ into Sarah Palin’s email (he guessed her password security questions / answers). Michelle Malkin has been all over the story and Skirts, Not Pantsuits suggests that the ‘hacker’ may be the adult son of a Tennessee State Representative - Democrat.

I wonder how long it will take the FBI to catch up… Or at least tell us about it…

UPDATE: Wired reports on the story, says they’ve talked to the TN State Rep on the phone, who ”said he could not talk about the matter and would have no comment”.

UPDATE: The Tennessean reports:

State Rep. Mike Kernell confirmed Thursday that his son, a University of Tennessee-Knoxville student, is at the center of heated Internet discussion into the hacking of the personal e-mail of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Kernell, a Memphis Democrat, confirmed that it is his 20-year-old son, David, who is being widely named on Internet blogs and chatrooms in connection with an unfolding story about Palin’s hacked e-mail accounts.

UPDATE:  Terry Frank has posted screenshots of David Kernell’s Facebook, where Kernell describes his ‘Political Views’ as “Obamacrat”. Kernell is a ‘Member of’ groups like: “UT for Barack Obama”, “Support the Jena 6″, “Free the Jena Six”, and “The Fastest Way to a Girl’s Heart is Through Her Gay Best Friend” (OK, that one’s funny).

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni won the Kadima Party primary, which means that she will likely become the next Prime Minister of Israel, pending Ehud Olmert’s resignation (expected Sunday) and Kadima forming a Government (without a general election). Livni received 43% of the vote, beating out Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz (42%), Meir Sheetrit (8.5%), and Avi Dichter (6.5%).

Caroline Glick had this to say about Livni before the election:

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni may not be a crook, but she is a fraud. And if polls are to be believed, Livni the fraud is just one fraudulent election away from becoming our next prime minister…

Unlike all the other party primaries that have been held over the years, this one is designed not as a preparatory step ahead of general elections to the Knesset. Rather, it is intended to replace general elections. The expressed goal of Livni and her three opponents - Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, Public Security Minister Avi Dichter and Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit - is not to ready Kadima for elections, but to select a new prime minister who will form a governing coalition that will bar the public from electing its representatives until March 2010.

It should be noted that Glick is a former Likud Party official (the same party as former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu).  This part is interesting to me because of the ‘Vote Contractor’ angle (think ‘Community Organizer’ and ACORN):

Only 15 percent of Kadima’s members joined the party on their own initiative. According to analyses conducted over the past several months, these 15% are people who were swept up in the initial excitement when Kadima was formed by Ariel Sharon in 2005…

The other 85% of Kadima’s 70,000 members are people who were brought into the party by those nefarious standard-bearers of Israeli politics of recent years: the vote contractors.

Vote contractors are political bosses and paid political operatives who peddle their influence in various communities, labor unions and population sectors to persuade citizens to join specific parties as bloc voters.

In its brief political life span, Kadima’s membership rolls have been subject to multiple criminal investigations. In one case now under investigation, up to 1,000 people were signed up for the party without their knowledge. Vote contractors forged their signatures on membership forms and paid their membership fees.

 Seems like liberals use the same tactics all over the world. Saul Alinsky would be so proud.

 One of my favorite websites is ‘Sweetness & Light’, here is a post about ACORN and their history of undermining the US election system - ”to overwhelm, paralyze, and discredit the voting system through fraud, protests, propaganda and vexatious litigation.”

I heard about a strange new fad today on NPR: silent raves.  Basically a bunch of people congregate in a pre-selected location, turn on their iPods, and dance.  And I thought flash mobs were dumb.

The FBI released the Crime in the United States 2007 report, dated 15 September 2008.  Here’s a summary of the Crime Summary:

After rising for two straight years, the estimated number of violent crimes in the Nation declined from the previous year’s total. The declining trend continued for property crimes, as those offenses were down for the fifth year in a row… the estimated volume of violent crime was down 0.7 percent, and the estimated volume of property crime decreased 1.4 percent in 2007 when compared with 2006 figures. The estimated rate of violent crime (…was a) 1.4 percent decrease… the estimated rate of property crime was…. a 2.1 percent decline…

Note: Caution Against Ranking—Each year when Crime in the United States is published, some entities use reported figures to compile rankings of cities and counties.  These rough rankings provide no insight into the numerous variables that mold crime in a particular town, city, county, state, or region.  Consequently, they lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that often create misleading perceptions adversely affecting communities and their residents.

Of course, I can hardly wait for the National Rankings to be compiled. Last year, Huntsville ranked #83, Birmingham ranked #13.  Crime in Birmingham is up this year (roughly 5% over last year; murder down, robberies, burglaries, theft and car theft way up); crime in Huntsville seems to be down about 6% (murder up, theft and car theft down).  Here’s the FBI data for 2007.

The Birmingham News is reporting that “Birmingham makes FBI Top 10 lists in violent crime, property crime and homicides”.

Anti-capitalist Democrats (and regrettably the Republican candidate for president) won’t like hearing it, but speculators are not to blame for high oil prices in recent months.  So sayeth the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

In one of the broadest and most authoritative studies to date, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has offered hard statistical data that financial trading hasn’t been driving price moves. The CFTC conducted an unprecedented Wall Street data sweep and scrutinized millions of transactions worth billions of dollars between January and June of this year.

Commodity futures markets have grown fivefold by volume over the last decade, while becoming more complex. “Index traders” are one cause. These pension funds and other institutional investors don’t buy options for commercial use, but rather roll them over from month to month as passive long-term investments. “Swap dealers,” usually investment banks, operate off the main exchanges and sell customized futures packages to firms. These aggregations of options and derivatives are designed to match particular needs and spread risk more broadly.

Lo and behold, the CFTC found that index traders and swap dealers actually reduced their stake in crude oil futures as prices spiked. The number of contracts held by these investors betting that prices would increase — the net long position — fell by 11%, and more were shorting oil than going long over the six-month period. In other words, index traders and swap dealers were driving the future price of oil down.

I hate it when I’m right.  Oh well, on to the next excuse for trying to exert more government control over private markets.

From the AP:

A new set of potential problems in Rep. Charles Rangel’s financial papers has prompted the tax-writing lawmaker to hire a forensic accounting expert to try to unravel the mess.

Rangel, chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, is already the subject of ethics committee investigations on several fronts, including unreported income and unpaid taxes on his beach house in the Dominican Republic.

…

Among the new discrepancies:

• Rangel’s papers over the past 10 years show no reference to the sale of a home he once owned on Colorado Avenue in Washington.
• The details of a property bought in Sunny Isles, Fla., are bewildering at best. The stated value changes significantly from year to year, and even page to page, from $50,000 to $100,000 all the way up to $500,000.
• Some of the entries for investment funds fluctuate strangely, suggesting that the person either didn’t have accurate information or didn’t fill out the paperwork correctly.

The NY Times is calling on Rangel to step aside as chair of the Ways and Means Committee while he is being investigated.  Their plea isn’t as noble as it might seem at first blush.  The phrasing they use suggests they want to see Rangel step aside so that their preferred party isn’t tainted by his possible ethical lapses:

His temporary yielding of the gavel is an urgent necessity for a Democratic Congress elected two years ago on promises of an ethical housecleaning.

To be fair, the paper has worked hard to help out the Democrats.  It would be a pity to see Rangel spoil their investment.

The way I see it there are three conclusions one could draw from this situation (two and three go hand in hand):

1. Rangel is a criminal who intentionally sought to avoid paying taxes he legally owed.  I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume this is not the case.
2. He is so hopelessly ignorant of his own personal and business finances that it is hard to believe he has the aptitude to be the chief tax author in our Congress.
3. This is a sign that the tax code is too complex.  This is what both I and the Wall Street Journal believe (although I’m not discounting #2).  If the most senior member of Congress in charge of taxation gets confused - habitually confused it appears - then how can you and I be expected to comply with the onerous federal tax code?

Maybe Rangel should consider the FairTax in order to simply federal taxes.  I would hate to see him get ensnared in any more tax avoidance scandals.

I would be remiss in failing to remind north Alabama voters about Rangel’s ties to the Tennessee Valley.  Parker Griffith, the Democrat’s candidate for Congress, has taken thousands of dollars from Rangel.

Who Wrote This (reminiscent of the dormant ‘Daily Dixie’):

When the aim of education is the absorption of facts, learning becomes exclusively and exhaustively selfish, and there is no obvious social motive for learning. The measure of success is always a competitive one—it is about comparing results and sorting people into winners and losers. People are turned against one another, and every difference becomes a potential deficit. Getting ahead of others is the primary goal in such places, and mutual assistance, which can be so natural, is severely restricted or banned.

Unlike Dan, I’ll go ahead and give you the answer: “respected” “mainstream” “distinguished professor” “school reform activist” William Ayers (also known as Marxist terrorist William Ayers, who is “friendly” with Barack Obama). Note that all those glowing descriptions of Ayers are from Obama’s ‘Fact Check’.

Who knew that learning “facts” is “selfish” and that “winners and losers” are unnatural?  I’ll go ahead and answer that too, Antonio Gramsci.  Gramsci is credited with the idea of “cultural hegemony“, which addressed the failure of socialism to ignite communist revolutions in capitalist states:

Gramsci therefore argued for a strategic distinction between a “war of position” and a “war of manoeuvre”. The war of position is a culture war in which anti-capitalist elements seek to gain a dominant voice in mass media, mass organizations, and educational institutions to heighten class consciousness, teach revolutionary analysis and theory, and inspire revolutionary organization. Following the success of the war of position, communist leaders would be empowered to begin the war of manoeuvre, the actual insurrection against capitalism, with mass support.

Understanding Gramsci helps explain the mess that is public education, the leftism extant in many institutions, and the bias of the media.

To bring this home, consider this from a “News” article in the UAH Exponent:

…you could always try red: the Socialist Party of America has also announced their nominees. Far from hazy images of Cuba or the former Soviet Union (both of which were communist, not socialist), the party’s Statement of Principles asserts that “The Socialist Party strives to establish a radical democracy that places people’s lives under their own control—a non-racist, classless, feminist socialist society … where working people own and control the means of production and distribution through democratically-controlled public agencies…

It’s obvious to most people that facts weren’t important to that reporter…  It’s interesting to me that communism has such a bad reputation among today’s socialists that they feel compelled to rebrand their beliefs.  Anybody here think that communism isn’t a form of socialism? Anybody here think that people like Gramsci and Ayers have impacted US education?

From across the pond:

The threat of global warming is so great that campaigners were justified in causing more than £35,000 worth of damage to a coal-fired power station, a jury decided yesterday. In a verdict that will have shocked ministers and energy companies the jury at Maidstone Crown Court cleared six Greenpeace activists of criminal damage.

Jurors accepted defence arguments that the six had a “lawful excuse” to damage property at Kingsnorth power station in Kent to prevent even greater damage caused by climate change. The defence of “lawful excuse” under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 allows damage to be caused to property to prevent even greater damage - such as breaking down the door of a burning house to tackle a fire.

Crazy.  Just crazy.

Dale Jackson has the details on his blog.  Basically the Lawrence County school board attorney formally requested a school principal to email an invitation to a Parker Griffith “reception” to other principals.  Oh, and the board attorney, H. Jerome Thompson, is the Chairman of the Lawrence County Democratic Executive Committee.  I’m no attorney and I don’t know campaign laws, but it doesn’t pass the smell test.

Heard on the Street - I was hanging around with some Yellow Dog Democrats today, talking local politics, when one them said he wasn’t voting for Obama because “I’m not voting for a Communist“.  This group of Yellow Dogs all agreed with that statement - not one defended Obama.

They don’t like Jeremiah Wright and Black Liberation Theology, they don’t like Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers, and they don’t like Obama.

Note that these people don’t listen to talk radio, don’t spend much time (if any) on the Internet, and are leaders and contributors in local Democratic politics…