The twenty-year-old son of Tennessee state representative Mike Kernell, a Democrat, plead not guilty today at a federal court in Knoxville. Prosecutors had charged David Kernell with breaking into GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's email by guessing the answers to her password-recovery answers, and then posted her new password, "popcorn," on 4chan. A judge released Kernell without bail, but forbid him to own a computer or to use the Internet for anything other than email and classwork. Compared to Kevin Mitnick's eight-year ban from the Internet, that's a decree as level-headed as it is unenforceable.

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