Free Republic

Despite the relatively new frenzy to find extraterrestrial life in the universe after astronomers discovered water to exist on a number of celestial bodies over the years, research shows that the only place aliens can be “found” are on bone-chilling late-night documentaries of UFO sightings.According to exhaustive analysis performed by a team of scientists at Penn State University (PSU), absolutely no sign of highly advanced extraterrestrial lifeforms exist in the known universe — at least 100,000 galaxies of it, that is. A lonely frontier In their latest virtual expedition through space, scientists have used all of their high-tech gadgetry...

Many of you probably saw the network news reports about the United Airlines flight yesterday that returned to Dulles International airport when a crazed passenger yelling something about Jihad was restrained by other passengers. What you might have seen only on local but not on national broadcasts was a crazed Pennsylvania State University professor who began ranting loony left slogans on a flight from Nicaragua to Miami last weekend.  The Washington Post published a story about professor Karen Halnon whose rantings sounded too embarrassingly close to an MSNBC host for NBC Nightly News or the other national broadcasts to cover. Even the...

Pennsylvania woman was arrested at Miami International Airport for allegedly being disorderly on a flight and not complying with the flight crew, according to a police report. Karen Halnon, 52, was on an American Airlines flight headed from Managua, Nicaragua to Miami on Saturday. Officials and passengers said Halnon, a Penn State University professor, started ranting about halfway through her two and a half hour flight. “The United States has declared war on Venezuela! The United States has declared war on Venezuela!” the woman repeatedly said, according to iPhone footage shot by a fellow passenger. “Venezuela has been declared an...

Penn State's president should cancel plans to have a co-founder of the violent anti-war group the Weather Underground speak on campus next week, the state Senate's presiding officer said Friday. cComments Got something to say? Start the conversation and be the first to comment. ADD A COMMENT 0 President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, a Jefferson County Republican, told university president Eric Barron in a letter he wants to know how much it is costing the university to host Bill Ayers next week. "The decision to allow Mr. Ayers to address your students and faculty in light of his violent past...

video Keith Olbermann returned to ESPN tonight after a short suspension for a tweet last week that looked like he was being insensitive to Penn State students who raised millions to fight pediatric cancer.Olbermann likened Twitter to batting practice, where people are so eager to be “one of those screaming baseballs” flinging themselves at something outrageous without looking at the context.But he didn’t excuse himself in all this, saying, “I was not a victim here. I brought this on myself. This is my fault.”Olbermann saw a tweet from a Penn State fan, and didn’t know there was a link...

ESPN anchor Keith Olbermann will not anchor his show for the rest of the week after a series of tweets directed at Penn State students. Olbermann, who was most recently critical of Penn State on his ESPN show in January after Joe Paterno's vacated wins were restored, was told on Twitter by a user about the $13 million raised by Penn State students for pediatric cancer. He responded to the tweet with a response of "pitiful." "We are aware of the exchange Keith Olbermann had on Twitter last night regarding Penn State. It was completely inappropriate and does not reflect...

"“We are aware of the exchange Keith Olbermann had on Twitter last night regarding Penn State. It was completely inappropriate and does not reflect the views of ESPN. We have discussed it with Keith, who recognizes he was wrong. ESPN and Keith have agreed that he will not host his show for the remainder of this week and will return on Monday.”" "I apologize for the PSU tweets. I was stupid and childish and way less mature than the students there who did such a great fundraising job."

ESPN on Tuesday suspended Keith Olbermann for the remainder of the week after he made insulting comments about Penn State students on Twitter.According to multiple reports, a Penn State alum tweeted to Olbermann the phrase "We Are!" and a link to an article about students raising more than $13 million to fight pediatric cancer. Olbermann replied "...Pitiful."Penn State students and alum rallied on Twitter and pressed Olbermann, who refused to back down, saying he was referring to Penn State students in general and not the fundraising.On Tuesday, ESPN said in a statement that "it was completely inappropriate and does...

The NCAA received another serious blow to its credibility today. In court documents filed Thursday in the Paterno lawsuit, Oregon State President and then-NCAA Executive Committee Chairman Ed Ray admitted to not actually reading the Freeh Report — the entire basis for the NCAA sanctions — prior to sanctioning Penn State in 2012. In his testimony in the Paterno Family’s ongoing case, Ray said he was unaware that he needed to prep for anything related to the Freeh Report before the organization’s executive board met to discuss possible sanctions on the University. Instead, Ray spent time in Hawaii where he...

But when the protest neared its conclusion, they were joined by university President Eric Barron, who held up his hands in the “don’t shoot” pose has become a gesture of solidarity with the movement.

Penn State Young America’s Foundation Chapter were told to take down their table from a designated “free speech zone” on campus. They were handing out Constitutions – on Constitution Day.

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...

youtube link here as well

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...

It was a couple of weeks ago during that beautiful day of the Blue-White game and I was taking goofy videos of tailgaters consuming the sunshine and other things. The mood was festive. One of the young adults who I featured in a video asked me with enthusiasm how I felt about James Franklin. He was on a recruiting roll. I said levelly that I would've chosen deposed Tennessee Titans coach Mike Munchak instead but we'll see how it goes. The guy contorted his face as if I'd just offered him a bowl of Brussels sprouts. "Are you kidding?" he...

A brown dwarf that’s as frosty as the Earth’s North Pole has been discovered lurking incredibly close to our Solar System. Astronomer Keven Luhman from Pennsylvania State University used NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and the Spitzer Space Telescope to pinpoint the object’s temperature and distance. This is the coldest brown dwarf found so far, and it’s a mere 7.2 light-years away, making it the seventh closest star-like object to the Sun. “It is very exciting to discover a new neighbor of our Solar System that is so close,” said Luhman in a press release. Brown dwarfs emerge when...

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just completed a series of landmark reports that chronicle an update to the current state of consensus science on climate change. Its conclusion: On our current path, climate change could pose an irreversible, existential risk to civilization as we know it, but we can still fix it if we decide to work together. But in addition to the call for cooperation, the reports also shared an alarming new trend: Climate change is already destabilizing nations and leading to wars. That finding was highlighted in last week's premiere of Showtime's climate change docu-drama...

Global Warming: Russian analysts accuse Britain's Meteorological Office of cherry-picking Russian temperature data to "hide the decline" in global temperatures. Is Copenhagen rooted in a single tree in Siberia? Michael Mann, a Penn State meteorologist, wrote in Friday's Washington Post that "stolen" e-mails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit still don't alter the evidence for climate change. Mann, a creator of the discredited hockey-stick graph used in reports from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to show man-made warming, attacks climate skeptics, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, saying they "confuse the public." Chutzpah has been...

Former Pennsylvania State University president Graham B. Spanier is again asking a judge to dismiss charges against him regarding the alleged cover-up stemming from the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse case, this time alleging misconduct by the prosecutor in the case. In a lawsuit filed Monday against Attorney General Kathleen Kane in U.S. District Court in Harrisburg, Spanier accuses former deputy Attorney General Frank Fina of violating his civil rights and acting in "bad faith" by bringing charges based on testimony from attorney Cynthia Baldwin, who was representing Spanier at the start of the investigation.