Free Republic

For any night owls that might want to watch something fun and uplifting. The Hockey team won the Pep Rally portion (where all the athletic teams perform skits for the dancers) - 2 hours after beating powerhouse Minnesota in overtime! Dancers stood up at 6PM yesterday and won't sit until 4PM tomorrow. Long way to go yet.

LANTANA, Fla. —Robert VanWinkle aka Vanilla Ice was arrested Wednesday by the Lantana Police Department on burglary charges. Police investigated a residential burglary which occurred sometime during December 2014 and February 2015 in the 100 block of N. Atlantic Drive. According to Lantana Police, during the burglary incident, numerous items of furniture, pool heater, bicycles and other items were removed from the residence which is currently in the process of foreclosure. Police determined VanWinkle played a role in the burglary and theft. Police say VanWinkle is currently renovating the residence adjacent to the property in which the items were stolen....

Bill Cosby's stand-up tour has stopped in northern Ohio, where it drew several protesters before the show. Police in Sandusky had extra officers at the theater while Cosby performed Friday night.

The story seems like it’s been told forever at Penn State University. Long-tenured coach builds up a sports program that becomes so successful its players bask in national prominence year after year. The coach gains so much respect he receives status as an honorary alumnus, gets a flavor named for him at Penn State’s famed Berkey Creamery and earns a spot on the “Inspiration” mural just off the State College campus. Naturally, we’re talking about the school’s vaunted football program, right? Not this time. Russ Rose and his women’s volleyball team at Penn State recently took the floor inside Oklahoma...

Due to Penn State University’s significant progress toward ensuring its athletics department functions with integrity, the NCAA Executive Committee on Monday eliminated the school’s postseason ban, effective immediately, and will return the full complement of football scholarships in 2015-16. The committee’s action endorses recommendations released Monday by George Mitchell, the university’s athletics oversight monitor, in his latest report. In addition to the scholarship and postseason participation changes, Mitchell also recommended that if Penn State continues to make impressive progress at the conclusion of the 2015 report, Mitchell’s oversight may conclude substantially earlier than 2017, the date set forth in the...

The Penn State Nittany Lions are eligible to play in a bowl game this season after the NCAA ruled they are satisfied with the athletic department’s progress in ensuring it functions with integrity. “Penn State’s commitment to the integrity of its athletics department and its progress toward meeting the requirements of the Consent Decree are clear,” said Northern Arizona President Rita Hartung Cheng via NCAA.org, who chaired Monday’s Executive Committee meeting. “We thank Senator Mitchell for his meticulous and exhaustive work over the past two years. Mitchell’s efforts and the dedication of Penn State officials made today’s decisions possible.” Penn...

HARRISBURG - Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane's review of the investigation into pedophile Jerry Sandusky was supposed to finally explain why the case took nearly three years to build, and whether it was bogged down by politics. Instead, the 166-page report she released Monday was overshadowed by Kane's own assertion - not included in the document - that two victims alleged they were sexually abused by Sandusky even while he was under investigation.

bronze statue of Joe Paterno seated on a bench is planned for installation outside the Tavern Restaurant in November 2015. The statue, designed by sculptor Zenos Frudakis, is in response to Rodney Erickson’s decision to remove Joe Paterno’s statue from Porter Road in July 2012. “There’s been some level of frustration among Penn Staters with what happened with the statue at the stadium,” Ted Sebastianelli, one of the organizers of the project, said. “We wanted to come up with a way to honor Joe for all that he did for the State College community. It wasn’t just the university he...

THE STAR WITNESS was anonymous, like each of Jerry Sandusky's victims. He was described in the grand jury presentment only as "a Penn State graduate assistant." Anyone reading the 23-page presentment released on Nov. 4, 2011, would be horrified by the prosecution's version of what the witness said he saw a decade ago. In the locker room shower inside the Lasch Football Building on Penn State's campus, he stumbled upon "a naked boy, Victim 2 ... with his hands up against the wall, being subjected to anal intercourse by a naked Sandusky. The graduate assistant was shocked but noticed that...

The lawyer for ex-Penn State president Graham Spanier is raising new questions over what she called contradictions raised by the grand jury testimony of Cynthia Baldwin, the university’s embattled former in-house lawyer. Baldwin approached the state Attorney General’s Office about an “off the record” discussion in exchange for a deal in which the information she provided was not to be used against her, according to documentation released Sunday by Spanier lawyer Elizabeth Ainslie. Baldwin signed the document, called a proffer letter, on Oct. 19, 2012, and a week later she went before a grand jury. In her testimony, Baldwin said...

Penn State has announced that it is paying $59.7 million to 26 young men to settle claims of child sexual abuse at the hands of former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. The university said it had concluded negotiations that have lasted about a year. The school said 23 deals are fully signed and three are agreements in principle. The school faces six other claims, and the university says it believes some do not have merit while others may produce settlements.

Another key figure in the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse case weighed in Tuesday with his take on whether former Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno was an active participant in efforts to cover up Sandusky's sex crimes. In an interview recorded for CBS 60 Minutes Sports, former Chief Deputy Attorney General Frank Fina said flatly: "I did not find that evidence." That was after Fina stated that he did come to believe, as the state's probe of Sandusky progressed, that former Penn State president Graham Spanier and several of his top aides had tried to interfere with the...

Three former Penn State administrators accused of covering up complaints about Jerry Sandusky lost a set of rulings Tuesday, allowing their criminal cases to move forward. Judge Barry Feudale denied an attempt to throw out the grand jury report backing up the accusations and ruled against two other defense requests. As the judge who oversaw the grand jury, Feudale said he no longer has jurisdiction. Feudale said he would not have granted the defendants' request that the charges be thrown out and emphasized that the case was out of his hands once the grand jury issued its report. But the...

After 14 months of focusing on Joe Paterno and PSU's alleged failures, when Ziegler attempts to finally defend Paterno, the media shifts their focus to the real culprit of the scandal -- Jerry Sandusky. Also, not testifying at trial is the new standard of guilt in America. If you had any false hopes that the media would be willing to give Joe Paterno and PSU a fair hearing about the Sandusky Scandal, yesterday should have crushed those hopes. John Ziegler appeared on The Today Show and on CNN's Piers Morgan. He also did several radio and phone interviews, of which...

Jerry Sandusky says that if Penn State coach Joe Paterno "absolutely thought" he was a pedophile, he would not have let him coach. "If he had a suspicion, I don't know the answer to that," he says. He made the statement in the course of 3.5 hours of telephone interviews with filmmaker John Ziegler, who is making a documentary in defense of Paterno; it's the first interview Sandusky has given since he began serving his sentence, and portions of the conversation aired on the Today show this morning. More:   On witness and former assistant coach Mike McQueary: "I don't...

This excerpt from the Clemente Report is very disturbing. For anyone who refuses to believe that Joe didn't know - I think this story will change their minds. Would anyone blame this Mom, like they blame Joe? Would she be fired? Would she be cast as a horrible, evil person? Should all of her life's good work be erased because of this episode? Was she demonized like Joe has been? And this molestation happened literally right in front of her eyes. Please watch the video, read the Clemente report, THEN please post your comments and let us know what you...

'Big Gay' now 'biggest, baddest, boldest bully on the block' Big Pharma and Big Tobacco each have had their day in the sun, and may again sometime, but one pro-family group says there’s another increasingly aggressive and powerful juggernaut at play in America: “Big Gay.” Bryan Fischer, director of issue analysis for the American Family Association, told WND in an interview, “‘Big Gay’ has become the biggest, baddest, boldest bully on the block.” He was reacting to revelations that the Boy Scouts of America are considering giving in to the homosexual lobby and opening their doors to homosexual scouts and...

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Gov. Tom Corbett scheduled a news conference for Wednesday to announce the filing of a federal lawsuit against the NCAA over stiff sanctions imposed against Penn State in the aftermath of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal. ................. A person associated with the university and knowledgeable about the matter told The Associated Press that it is an antitrust action. .................... In announcing the news conference, Corbett, a Republican, did not indicate whether his office coordinated its legal strategy with state Attorney General-elect Kathleen Kane, who is scheduled to be sworn in Jan. 15. Kane, a...

FULL TITLE: 'He's treated like the worst of the worst': Sandusky put on hard routine and separated from other inmates for his own protection Serial child sex offender Jerry Sandusky lives under tight restrictions in prison for his own safety, it has been revealed. The former Penn State coach is on hard routine after he asked for more prison privileges and then received threats from inmates. 'He is being housed in the appropriate facility in order to assure his safety,' said Susan McNaughton, press secretary for the Pennsylvania state Department of Corrections. She responded to questions from Reuters after one...

By Adam Lidgett Collegian Staff Writer The three former Penn State administrators charged with perjury in relation to the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse case have all filed motions referencing the way a former university attorney testified against them to the grand jury — and some legal experts are saying the case is tainted because of it. Both former Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley and former Interim Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Gary Schultz have filed to have their Dec. 13 preliminary hearing postponed. Both men say they believed former university counsel Cynthia Baldwin was representing them...