I know Mistermix touched on this already, but I just spent an hour reading the Freeh Report (.pdf), and the whole thing is far more shocking than I even imagined it would be, and I have a pretty low opinion of humanity these days. I can’t believe Penn State is allowed to keep their football program.
As to the principal actors, well, Paterno is dead, but for the rest of them, all any jury would need to do is read this report and find cause to convict every single one of them.
Wyrm1
I’m sitting here listening to Jay Paterno talk about how this is just one person’s opinion and that Joe didn’t break any laws and that this is a small part of Joe’s life. This after listening to the Board of Trustees trying to cover their butts for a half an hour.
If I hear one more person who SHOULD have done something say “In hindsight we should have….” I’m going to throw something at the TV.
Fester
My wife works at a law firm and all she said at lunch is that the litigation attorneys were quietly wishing their fellow but unknown civil litigators good luck as they were debating whether the initial PSU settlement offer would be 50 million or 100 million after they read the lowlights
Elizabelle
Seems to me Joe Paterno et al got a lot of the punishment the Catholic Church also richly deserves.
I think JoePa knew this would come out one day (i.e. house titled in his wife’s name), and its revelation hastened his death.
Penn State deserves to lose its football program for years, as a warning to others tempted to protect the sport against all else.
I hope Penn State’s housecleaning is a catalyst for similar action on the Catholic Church. From outside, if not from within.
LanceThruster
Good point. Illegal recruiting violations and the like would have gotten them sanctioned…but(t) child rape…not so much.
Samuel Knight
Life time record of wins should go too.
Every game after 1998 – gone.
And Joe P was big time conservative Catholic – and he showed the priests had trained him well on this one. He acted exactly how the (male) Catholic hierarchy did – denial, attack, denial.
LanceThruster
Bill Donohue of the Catholic League will blame it on “teh gays” and not on pedophiles and rapists.
GregB
Someone should tell the Paterno family that it is sad that the little thing that happened one night with Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman has overshadowed O.J. Simpson’s long and storied football career.
Odie Hugh Manatee
TPTB at Penn State did everything they could to keep this covered up and for that alone PSU should lose their sports program. When the money, people and prestige of a sports program are more important than the rape of numerous children then it needs to die.
Now.
Ash Can
@Elizabelle: I have to wonder if somehow, someway, a precedent such as Penn State going down for their crimes and the world not ending as a result helps legal professionals muster the spine and fortitude to really go after the wrongdoers in the Catholic Church. I have a hard time believing that the scarcity of investigations, let alone convictions, has nothing to do with any unwillingness on the part of legal professionals to go after clergy.
David Koch
it could have been worse, at least Paterno didn’t use Drooooooones
handsmile
That should be “principal” actors.
Their utter lack of principles, indeed human decency, is made all too manifest by the Freeh Report.
JPL
What bothers me is it is just not Penn State. Sandusky applied for other jobs and was rejected. They protected other football programs but not eleven year old boys.
Libby
Haven’t been able to read a thing about this since the indictment. Just thinking about reading the details makes me want to vomit, for real.
hueyplong
Penn State, like the banksters and the Catholic Church, is too big to fail.
Who could have guessed that when an entity became powerful enough, it would consider itself unaccountable?
This is, of course, why America needs Mitt Romney and the GOP in charge.
Maude
@Libby:
I’m not reading it.
Those poor children.
sophronia
I just keep wondering, between this and the Catholic Church scandals, how many more respected institutions are covering up something like this? I used to think it was implausible, but now I’m not so sure.
geg6
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
So all sports should suffer? And all sports at every Penn State campus, none of which had anything to do with any of this? As should, as I saw posted numerous times in the other thread, the entire University and everyone connected to it?
Fuck all ya’ll if you think that.
Brachiator
@sophronia:
Well apart from other religious institutions and the Boy Scouts, there’s California teacher’s unions.
The sad thing is that some sick people commit evil acts, and people who should know better can always be counted on to hold a principle or institution higher than the pain of any victim.
aimai
Can “sports” suffer? Take the money and give it to the students and organizations on campus who have done nothing wrong and worked their hearts out charitably for good rather than as a cover for old men’s sex crimes.
aimai
Jade Jordan
If people can be pardoned after the die we should set a precedent with Paterno and convict him after death.
Amir Khalid
@geg6:
I agree. The football program was allowed to become so important to Penn State as to blind administrators to their legal and moral duty. It should at the very least suffer some sort of demotion. (How does the NCAA rank university football teams anyway?)
But action against the rest of the university’s sports program, absent proof of culpability in something similarly heinous, would be punishing the innocent.
Sly
Maybe we should take a page from the Catholic Church and hold a good ol’ fashioned Cadaver Synod.
Elizabelle
@Ash Can:
I wonder if the bishops’ crusade against birth control and ObamaCare (in the name of religious freedom, of course) is partly a ploy to take up the mantle of “victim”, just in time.
They’re already wearing it, and ginning up their base, so that once people think “aha” on learning more about Penn State … now where have we seen this behavior before?
Eric S.
@Amir Khalid:
So how’s this sound, the football program suspended from play* for the same number of years as Sandusky get’s sentenced. Now, for good behavior, we’ll let them resume play after 50% of the sentence is served. Of course, they’ll be on probation so, of course, no bowl games for the duration.
* All current players and those that have signed lettes of intent would be granted waivers from NCAA rules and be allowed to freely transfer to other universities.
(Yes, there are unicorns in my world. Why do you ask?)
Donut
But gosh, I thought, according to the shitstain who is always showing up in threads on this topic, we shouldn’t pass judgment, because…uh…because…
Because nothing. You inhuman creep. You have been defending the indefensible. Is this good enough for you now?
SteveinSC
Probably one of the most pointless addenda to this is the many recommendations to prevent this from happening…again at PSU. Jesus fucking Christ. What a futile gesture. As to cover-up of pedophilia among the priesthood, that is not the issue. Nor is it whining about not all the sports at PSU should be tarred with the same brush, waaa, waa waa. The point is to put in place safeguards, at places far and wide, to stop this kind of shit that is going on now and will happen in the future, not slam the door after the horse has long since left that barn. PSU, like the Catholic Church, is just one more self perpetuating institution among thousands only interested in its own hide and not the people it should be serving.
Elizabelle
removing a double-post
cmorenc
@geg6:
The most extensive NCAA sanction would be particular to the football program itself (“the Death Penalty” whereby football gets shut down entirely at Penn State for a designated number of years), and would NOT extend to other varsity sports at Penn State, e.g. basketball, soccer, and so on.
Nevertheless, a “death penalty” sanction against football-only WOULD unavoidably have a severe financial impact on the majority of other varsity sports which are “non-revenue” in that they don’t bring in enough income to be self-supporting, but are rather supported in significant part by the “revenue” sports, with the overwhelming dominant source being the football program at a school like Penn State. Kill the football program for several years, and those will be lean years indeed for a great many other sports, perhaps temporarily fatal to some, impairing to others, and merely inconvenient to still others. Their basketball program probably is self-supporting enough to survive relatively unscathed, but probably only brings in a relatively modest amount of surplus revenue (if any) to benefit the other sports.
However, the collateral effect on other sports at Penn State is a necessary burden on other innocent student-athletes, in order to adequately punish and deter monstrously irresponsible behavior such as displayed by the football program.
J. Michael Neal
@Amir Khalid: Sports programs are classified by the size of the university. A school can decide to play up, in a division for schools larger than it is, but they can’t play down. So Penn State has to remain a Division I program.
Further, it doesn’t appear that Penn State committed any NCAA violations. I know that there are howls of outrage about the NCAA not imposing penalties, I can’t agree with them. The NCAA is an incredibly fucked up organization in lots of ways and I’d really rather they not be involved in punishing criminal violations. Let’s see if they can ever get themselves to the point where they’re effective and valuable in policing things that directly relate to their mandate.
As for taking the money and using it for something else, that’s not as easy as it might sound. If you kill the football program, you wipe out most, if not all, of the net revenue you could collect from any sport. (Yes, I think that Penn State is one of the few NCAA football programs that actually makes money, if you exclude the ensuing legal claims.) Beyond that, the assets the athletic department has aren’t terribly valuable to anyone else. What would you do with a 100,000 seat stadium out in the middle of Pennsylvania without the football program?
Beyond that, there is a lot of money that was donated for a specific purpose. I’m thinking in particular of the $80 million Terry Pegula (owner of the Buffalo Sabres) gave the school to start hockey programs (both men’s and women’s). They don’t even start playing until this coming September, so I’m not sure how you’d blame them for anything. Besides, I’d bet that Pegula gave the money on conditions that it be used for hockey and that if it is diverted, he takes it back. That’s just a hunch, but it’s the way I’d guess.
canuckistani
If I robbed a bank, I doubt my plea not be sent to jail because my wife and kids need the money would be received favourably.
WJS
@geg6: No, just Penn State’s football program.
Why’d you shift from “Penn State football” to “sports?”
And isn’t it odd that you really can’t bring yourself to understand that this is about the systematic abuse of a predatory sexual abuser who was protected by Joe Paterno, and not really about whether or not you’re going to be able to enjoy watching football in Happy Valley this fall?
Jay S
@J. Michael Neal: The NCAA appears to think otherwise [about NCAA violations]. See ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/public/NCAA/Resources/Latest+News/2012/June/NCAA+statement+on+Penn+State
ETA clarity about what they disagree about. They are investigating under broad ethics bylaws.
JPL
@geg6: Both my brother-in-law and sister-in-law taught at Penn State and you are absolutely right. Penn State is not alone in allowing a football coach to be involved in protecting the one institute.
J. Michael Neal
@Jay S: The idea of the NC$$ investigating anyone other than itself under “broad ethics bylaws” is a joke. Which isn’t to say that they won’t go through the motions on it, just that they don’t have the ethical standing for anyone to take them seriously.
MikeInSewickley
As the parent of a PSU alum, this does not surprise me at all.
I also have some other ties to the school which I do not want to go into but, again, not surprised at all.
For all the sports fans, I’m sorry but this just reinforces my opinion that America must begin the long horrific process of removing all sports, other than co-ed and other internal sports needs, from college similar to all other industrialized nations.
There is no college sports network in Europe, Asia, anywhere like we have here in the U.S.
It has become the tail wagging the dog and driving a stake into the academic heart of America. Anyone who does not teach or is employed by schools with these enormous sport infrastructure have no idea who much “the Wall Street do anything to protect the name and money” pervades the day to day teaching and operations. If they say otherwise, they are liars.
And to say this is not competition based and not an NCAA matter – bullshit. You are trying to tell me that bad news would not affect getting the best recruits leading to wins? Bullshit.
superfly
@J. Michael Neal:
It’s called “lack/loss of institutional control” and it’s a catch-all that the NCAA uses to punish things that don’t come under other rules and regulations.
Pretty sure this qualifies, but if you want to argue otherwise, please…
J. Michael Neal
@superfly: “Lack of institutional control” has a specific meaning under NCAA regulations, and this isn’t it. From their explanation:
and:
They only cover an inability to comply with NCAA regulations, not the penal code.
MikeInSewickley
Again, falling back to legalistic minutiae to excuse the abusive nature of college sports is heinous – understandable but heinous.
And pushing college athletes to their physical limits is also a good thing? Bullshit.
Again, all college is becoming is the minor leagues for the bigs.
I understand that these programs are used as the ATM for all the sports at main campuses and it is the primary “recruiting tool” for alum donations. But we are beginning to pay for it by a drop in our leadership in the sciences and engineering.
Sorry but that’s the way I feel.
Jay S
@J. Michael Neal: The NCAA letter (of November 17!) linked [to in the NCAA statement linked] in my comment lays out grounds for several possible violations of NCAA bylaws and includes lack of institutional control as a possibly. The fact that they either haven’t received a response or acted on the response yet doesn’t bode well for enforcement (the statement that they still have the original four questions outstanding imply that there has been no real response).
But the rules look broad enough provide for some action from NCAA.
Chet Manly
@Samuel Knight:
No way, leave that record intact. It’s not likely to ever be broken. 70 years from now when someone looks up the winningest football coach they’ll learn it was Paterno and the piece of crap covered up for a pedophile to get that record.
J. Michael Neal
@MikeInSewickley:
Why? It’s important not to push them too far beyond those limits, but I fail to see why demanding excellence is wrong.
This is quite amusing. I have season tickets to the women’s hockey team. There isn’t a professional league in North America for them to be the minor league for. (No, the CWHL doesn’t count, as much as I want to see it succeed, since the players aren’t paid.) Division III football programs aren’t built around being the minors, either, even though a couple of players a year get drafted.
And you do realize that you contradict yourself, right? If the big time sports programs really make that much money, then I don’t see the sequence of events that cause them to produce a loss of leadership in sciences and engineering. You need to pick one argument and stick with it.
As it happens, the vast majority of football programs don’t make money and only take deposits at the ATM. I agree that there are a lot of things about college athletics that need reform, but it does help to have some idea of what you’re talking about.
J. Michael Neal
@Jay S:
Which ones? All I saw in the letter was a bunch of gobbledigook designed to make it look like the NCAA cares, not anything that would lead to a specific charge.
burnspbesq
@MikeInSewickley:
No need to apologize for your feelings, but acknowledge that they aren’t backed up by a lot of facts.
In many cases, yes. Everyone learns important lessons about themselves by testing their limits. More specifically, there is at least one former college athlete who believes he survived the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center because of lessons learned in college sports. See Yeager & Pressler, “It’s Not About the Truth,” pp. 37-38 (2007).
Becoming? Has been, for as long as there have been professional sports in this country. It’s far from clear that our system is less good for the young people involved than youth development schemes in, for example, European and South American soccer, where kids are uprooted as early as age eight and if they don’t make it are thrown aside at 18 with no education and no marketable skills.
Assuming there is any correlation, that correlation is not causation.
WereBear
I’m no fan of sports or pedophilia, but a certain amount of sense gets thrown aside with the “burn the place down and sow the ground with salt” approach. It’s all very well to show how horrified we are by child abuse, but then turning around and abusing other innocents does no good at all.
This is what makes people want to cover it up; the broad circle of blame that gets thrown around and destroys elements that have nothing to do with it… at that point. They get desperate to cover it up because they know persecution can reach irrational levels.
So… don’t do anything irrational. Remove that excuse.
dollared
Hey JC, give you one guess as to the percentage of Fox Sports’s site visitors who think Penn State should NOT get the death penalty.
Yup. 27%. Now known as the “boys will do boys” demographic.
msn.foxsports.com/collegefootball/story/penn-state-should-lose-football-privileges-dealth-penalty-in…
burnspbesq
@WereBear:
Well said.
MikeInSewickley
@J. Michael Neal:
I am not shifting arguments. The money does NOT in general go down to the level of science teaching.
I enjoy your use of the math I teach as an argument that causation is not correlation. I wholeheartedly agree but, if you understand correlation, it is used to find variables that can act as a sign pointing to what is really the cause of the problem.
If money is spent on putting in the new hockey stadium rather than promoting the great new labs we have, please tell me that there is not a linkage.
burnspbesq
@MikeInSewickley:
In the specific case of Penn State hockey, you’re on thin ice (pun with malice aforethought). That gift was earmarked, and there is no reason to believe that the donor would have made an unrestricted gift of $80-million-plus.
Brachiator
@WereBear:
I disagree. People don’t cover up these crimes out of fear of an over-reaction. They cover them up because they want to protect friends and loved ones. They cover them up because they foolishly believe that an organization, an institution, a group, a buddy, is more important than any victim.
They cover the crimes up because they do not want to admit or acknowledge their own culpability.
Sometimes, people are even willing to persecute others in order to protect the guilty.
The documents that were released today don’t indicate a shred of fear on the part of Penn State officials, but rather a cold, deliberate calculation that the reputation of the school, of Joe Pa, and even of Sandusky, was more important than whatever crime was committed.
How long did the college officials get away with this? Fourteen years or so? Doesn’t seem to me that they were much afraid of anything. They figured that they had got away with it and could easily contain any negative reaction.
MikeInSewickley
@burnspbesq:
I have to leave now but a few points.
Yes, innocents will be hurt but in the long run enforcing a break of academics from sports is the proper thing to do.
Sorry for sending the wrong reply to the wrong person prior.
As for European sports forcing kids out into the street. We are talking about the same system that has a system for students who should not go to college but get a career in the skilled trades, something we are sadly lacking here. To attribute lack of college sport venue as a way to the gutter is pretty desperate as an argument.
One person attributes sports training to surviving the worst tragedy to hit America since Pearl Harbor shows that college sports works. Who is confusing causation with correlation?
Be on the inside and then tell me what you think.
J. Michael Neal
@MikeInSewickley:
That’s fine, but to make your case, you would have to show that money goes from science and engineering and to football. If, as you claim, the football program is an ATM that spits money out to other programs, than it is not draining anything from science and engineering. It is possible that other sports do, but football can’t be both profitable and not profitable at the same time.
Unless it’s run by Mitt Romney, of course.
J. Michael Neal
@MikeInSewickley:
Inside what? For what it’s worth, I’m now considered an official representative of the University of Minnesota athletics department, because I’m on the board of the booster club for women’s hockey. Does that count as being on the inside?
dianaprince
Penn State Football should end. Set an example that it’s not okay to DESTROY young lives just for profit and sports. Go find another college if all you want is football.
Triassic Sands
Eventually, Republicans will be recognized as a separate species (at some point lefties and righties will no longer be able to produce fertile offspring — too bad that didn’t happen before the Matalin-Carville coupling) and your opinion of humanity may rise, if only a little.
On the other hand, Democrats may also be drifting away — since many are at risk of becoming invertebrates.
Evolution continues, but it obviously isn’t progress.
MattR
@J. Michael Neal:
I don’t think this is quite true. AFAIK, there is nothing in the NCAA bylaws preventing a school such as Penn State or the University of Minnesota from dropping to Division II or III as long as they are willing to accept the restrictions that go with it. (ex. scholarship limits)
Jay S
@J. Michael Neal: The gobbledygook cited by the letter included reminders of the following from the Constitution (C) and Bylaws (B)
institutional control C 2.1
C 6.01.1
C 6.4
Values C 2.4
honesty honor B 10.1
B 11.1.1
head coach monitoring responsibility B 11.1.2.1
moral values B 19.01.2
The four questions related to how to square the behavior of the responsible parties under the obligations defined in the constitution and bylaws of the NCAA with the information available from the grand jury investigation.
Now they have further information from the internal investigation. This seems to lay out the rational for some form of action. They may well sit on their hands but I don’t think it will be from lack of authority.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Brachiator:
Say what?
superfly
@J. Michael Neal:
Read the NCAA’s letter, it lays out what rules, bylaws, etc. it believes are at issue, which it frames in terms of Penn State’s exercise of “institutional control and ethical conduct.”
The NCAA does what it wants (I’m sure we can agree on that, right?), whether they follow through with the death penalty, who knows, but they’ve laid out the basis for any action pretty clearly.
Rommie
@Jay S: I’m thinking now that the NCAA has to do something, because how can they sanction any program in the future if they do nothing?
I’m sure the next major offender will ask that same question, in court, and the NCAA may not like the answer. They’ve got to put the boots to PSU, and they have solid support to put the boots to PSU. A ticky-tack reason to avoid sanctions will draw attention to the NCAA itself and fire up a no-win scenario.
I’d wonder what the Big 10 will do except I know the $ sign runs that org and their new hockey league would get flushed if PSU got the boot.
I also know Big 10 crowds, and they’ll be BRUTAL to Penn State on the road. Part of me says they’ll deserve everything thrown at them, and I feel bad for feeling that way.
Nate
Read this and tell me they shouldn’t get the death penalty: chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/07/05/penn-state-football-recruits-using-scandal-as-motivation/
“We’re building our own relationships, and nothing is going to get in the way of our goals,” Fork Union (Va.) quarterback Christian Hackenberg [incoming freshman quarterback] told The Patriot News. “I really don’t have any comment on that whole situation. That’s the same for a lot of us. That wasn’t us in any shape or form. That was the last staff. And, to be honest, we’re sort of using it as motivation.”
Now, I have some sympathy for the players caught up in this through no real fault of their own, and I’m even willing to give a dumb 18 year old kid a pass for saying stupid shit, but the fact the those coaches weren’t on the phone to every single player drilling it into their idiot heads that you do not comment on this story is incredible.
The only acceptable answer for any incoming PSU player is “We’re trying to avoid distractions and put together a season Penn State can be proud of” over and over and over. That it’s not is an indication that the coaching staff feels this way too.
They’ve learned nothing. Losing the football program is too good for them.
J. Michael Neal
@Jay S:
@superfly:
I read it. As I said, gobbledygook. Their bylaws they’re citing are ridiculously vague and they have the fateful inclusion of
In other words, they can’t find anything in their rules to charge them with and so they go on at length about how the bylaws require good sportsmanship and ethical conduct without ever citing a single specific thing.
That’s not a letter written by someone who intends a serious investigation. It’s a letter written by someone who wants to look concerned. Find me something specific that the NCAA could charge Penn State with and you’ll have something. This letter isn’t it.
J. Michael Neal
@Rommie:
Beyond that, the Big 10 is not just an athletic organization. It involves connections between the academic departments as well. Penn State has put a lot of money into upgrading its academic programs over the last two decades to meet the standards of the other Big 10 institutions. No one is going to kick them out of the conference at this point.
Triassic Sands
@Elizabelle:
I’m not a sports fan, but in a case like this, I want to punish people, not an institution, since innocent people also get hurt when you penalize the school. Would it serve as a better deterrent to send the guilty party to real jail, or to go after the football team, which could have ripple effects throughout the school.
I’ve read differing opinions about the financial costs and contributions of big time college football teams, but if, in punishing the football team, you had a negative impact on the women’s volleyball team, would that concern you? Would it be just?
C.J.
@Triassic Sands:
So much this. Go ahead and cancel the football program, but when it ends with most of the other teams getting eliminated, you’ve done more damage than necessary.
Shit, PSU fencing had to clean Beaver Stadium in order to stay afloat financially, even while defending their NCAA championship. Is pulling the rug out from under them fair?
superfly
@J. Michael Neal:
You’re missing the point, the NCAA will do what it wants, or what it is forced to do by public pressure. I don’t think anyone here is claiming that the NCAA is a fine, upstanding organization that stands for moral values and ethical conduct. The NCAA is as corrupt and hypocritical as any organization in the world, at this point, they are only a bit more credible than the PSU football program, but if they let PSU off the hook, that bit is gone.
If it has to kill the PSU football program, it will. If it can get away with not doing so (because of lack of public pressure / everyone “just wants to move forward”), it probably won’t.
The NCAA’s rules, bylaws, its constitution, are gobbledygook, not worth wiping your ass with the paper they are written on, but if it serves the purpose of the NCAA to say PSU broke these rules, bylaws, etc., and thus must be punished, then that’s what they’ll do, without a second thought.
This isn’t going to be a legal case, but a matter of public pressure and credibility (or lack thereof), and your legalistic and semantic arguments are not going to be at issue, it will simply come down to a combination of (i) what is in the best interest of the NCAA and (ii) what can they get away with.
Just Some Fuckhead
Shorter Cole: I know the other FPers have already exhaustively covered this subject, but I can’t pass up an opportunity to divert traffic away from my own blog while adding nothing new to this one.
Robin G.
Okay, maybe it’s just me, but I think the argument for taking Penn State’s football (which I’m in favor of) is deterrance, not punishment. Penn State made the decisions it did because it believed revealing they had a child rapist in their midst was worse than the child rape itself. The NCAA should rip them stem to stern, thus making it clear to every other college that, guess what? Pull shit like this and you’ll get burned to the ground. Nail Penn State’s head to the door as a warning to others. Maybe next time the people in power might actually call the cops.
J. Michael Neal
@superfly:
That’s where you’re wrong. If the NCAA shut down Penn State’s football program without any specific charges, just that sort of vague bullshit, it would be a legal case in a heartbeat.
Bill
Just so y’all know, the scandal broke about two weeks after we mailed the (sizable) check for our season tickets this year.
Our tickets were originally bought by my wife’s dad in 1963, when he got out of the Army and married her Mom. My wife grew up on PSU football. We kept the tickets when he was ready to give them up, because, y’know, they’re the family tickets.
We’re not dreadful people. We’re as horrified as the rest of you. We didn’t ask for this, we sure as hell didn’t support it. Had we known, we would have felt and acted differently about PSU football. We didn’t know. We can’t believe that kids got abused under our roof. We didn’t abuse them.
Try to understand that power did what it always does. It corrupted, it absolutely did. It doesn’t mean that the program should be burned down. It means that the people responsible need to be held to account, in such a way that this never ever happens anywhere again.
Let’s see how that works out.
Spatula
To all of you justifiably horrified by this case and calling for extreme sanctions against Penn State, I have a question:
When was the last time you spent any fragment of the same energy calling for the heads of everyone associated with the Bush Administration’s illegal, immoral, and undeclared wars based on cooked intelligence and falsehoods?
As the country’s chief law enforcement officer, hasn’t Mr. Obama cheapened the meaning of ALL of our laws by letting the Bushies off scott free and saying we need to “look forward, not back?”
After all, GWB, Cheney, and the rest are responsible for hundreds of thousands dead and maimed. I’m pretty sure JoPa and Sandusky didn’t actually kill anyone.
Perhaps PSU’s current leadership should just encourage all victims, alumni, lawyers, prosecutors, and the public to “look forward, not back.” After all, what’ sto be gained by all that drama and agony now? What’s past is past.
Our President should set the tone and priorities for law enforcement by his example and practice. As a result, shouldn’t all the PSU creeps go free?
Spatula
@Bill:
That’s a very reasonable position, expressed with great clarity.
Thus, don’t expect to find much agreement with it here.
The prophet Nostradumbass
I guess it was only a matter of time until someone used the Penn Sate case as a pretext for attacking the Obama administration.
superfly
@J. Michael Neal:
You haven’t the faintest clue how the NCAA operates.
Spatula
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
It’s more of an attack on inconsistent moral outrage and Obot thinking in general, but your mileage may vary.
That said, would you care to address the question?
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Spatula: Your “question” is stupid, asked in bad faith, and relies on a truckload of false presumptions.
shortstop
@Bill: So you’re going to renew your tickets next year, huh?
JoyfulA
@WJS: geg6 works with students at a Penn State campus far from Happy Valley and has been stressed out by this and by Gov. Moron Corbett’s repeated deep budget cuts and rapidly rising tuitions. It’s not a matter of missing big football games for her, it’s her “kids” and her work, so please don’t project with such hostility.
Elizabelle
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Well done re response to Spatula.
Wish I could come up with such succinct and logical replies in offline life. Taking note.
Spatula
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
got nothing then?
Spatula
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
got nothing then?
pseudonymous in nc
@J. Michael Neal:
I agree: I don’t want the NCAA to have the power to pass judgement on something like this. It’s like asking Judge Judy to decide.
Let them play mall-cop and mall-judge the way they know best: selectively punishing violators of bullshit regulations while counting their cash.
WJS
@JoyfulA: Oh, I’m so sorry for her stress.
It must be so much worse than the stress felt by all of those raped children who were given no consideration at all by old Joe Pa. great leader of men.
God, show proper perspective much?
WJS
@Spatula: Exactly right. Sandusky’s repeated rape of children before Obama was elected is entirely because Obama failed to make you as happy as you are entitled to be.
Thank you for saying that. I have been trying to find the courage to say that on my own sucky blogs but I just couldn’t string those disparate concepts together because my small brain just doesn’t work that way.
superdestroyer
@J. Michael Neal:
It is clear that at Penn State that the Board of Trustees and the University’s Administration had no control over the Athletic Program. University employees were so afraid of the power of the athletic department and especially the football coach, that the employees would not report felonies to the police. The football program was so powerful that the football coach and athletic director perjurer themselves in grand jury testimony because even the state’s attorney’s were afraid of their power.
If the NCAA does not severely punish the football program and the Athletic program at Penn State, then the NCAA needs to eliminate the institutional control requirements in its regulations.
Spatula
@WJS:
No, tool, the question was for you Bots and regarding YOUR behavior, lack of consistency and priorities.
But I’ll give you one star for your attempt to make it about something else, as a good Bot would.
Carry on.
pseudonymous in nc
Shouldn’t you be fucking off to the land of pristine purity, Kitchen Implement?
Spatula
@pseudonymous in nc:
Still nothin’, eh?
Ever heard of moral authority? When Obama declined to prosecute or even investigate perhaps the worst propagators of mass murder and deception in U.S. history, he kind of lost any that he started out with.
His failure here also calls out the joke that is American jurisprudence: The more horrendous one’s crimes, the less likely one is to pay for them.
See also, too: Wall Street and Banks.
So it’s no wonder that upsets you.
JR in WV
An interesting thread of comment.
I wasn’t surprised by Sandusky’s conviction at all. I imagine the 4 PSU officials (3, really, since JoPa got dead) will be indicted too.
Child abuse is horrific – I was on a Grand Jury once and saw pictures, you wouldn’t believe. Made my eyes bleed, almost.
I’m a football fan of sorts, can’t name every trophy winner or winningest coach, but I like the game, enjoyed playing it in the backyard, sometimes go to a bowl game, always watch the big games on the TV. Go Mountaineers!
But…
But the actions of the PSU management to coverup Sandusky’s crimes are just a hair less horrible than the actual rapes.
I hope the guys recruited by PSU all transfer away to a better school – any school without a child rapist would be better. I hope the NCAA just puts PSU outside in the cold rain. I’m trying to forgive, to say that those honest folks who didn’t know and didn’t have anything to do with the coverup don’t deserve to bre punished, but I just can’t get there.
They should be put out of the NCAA for ethical failure of the worst kind.
Sorry, all you innocent PSU grads and employees, but you were standing next to the Sandusky bomb when it went off.
BuhBye.
WJS
@Spatula: And it was answered in a way that left you with nothing to say.
When you come back at someone else with:
“Ever heard of moral authority?”
What you’re really eager to share with the class is the fact that your moral indignation, and your ability to connect disparate subjects to a belief that everything begins and ends with the fact that Obama didn’t do what you felt he had to do to remain within your good graces, has left you with a lot of rage that ends up being spewed at people who really don’t care about you.
You see, I don’t care about you, Obama doesn’t care about you, and a whole lot of other folks don’t care about you either. That’s because you’re a purity troll and your schtick is rather tiresome.
Spatula
@WJS:
Wow. That’s a lot of effort for someone who doesn’t care. I’m flattered.
The topic of moral authority is DIRECTLY related to the question I asked in the first place, the one you’re twisting yourself into GWB pretzels to avoid addressing.
I’ll conclude since you have no valid reply: When the chief law enforcement officer in the land chooses to compromise the law in selective cases for politically corrupt reasons, the legitimacy of ALL law enforcement is tarnished, even this one.
Why would I care if you and your imagined clique care about me?
WJS
@Spatula:
Exactly. A lot of effort for someone not worth caring about. Got it.