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Penn State riot photos via The Daily Collegian

You can read my Twitter timeline for all the lowdown on how Penn State students turned Joe Paterno’s firing into an excuse for a mindless pep rally-turned-riot tonight. (Go here.) Oliver Darcy shot this video of the stampede after thousands poured onto the campus streets and someone overturned a WTAJ news van:

Hoodlums tore down street signs, threw beer bottles at police, pulled down a lamp post, and made an utter mess as they chanted “F**k the media” and “F**k the trustees” for taking long overdue, underwhelming action to can Paterno and Penn State’s president Graham Spanier for enabling accused child sex predator/rapist Joseph Sandusky for years. The Daily Collegian student newspaper has coverage as the riot unfolded — and I know I’m not the only one aggravated by the passive voice in the paper’s descriptions of students’ acts of vandalism and debauchery.

As if Penn State alumni and donors didn’t have enough reason to hang their heads in shame tonight…

The disgust over this scandal — this evil, this horror — transcends partisanship.

And this observation from Alberto Martinez sums it up for me:

“Nothing Joe Paterno did for #PSU outweighs the one thing he failed to do.”

Period.

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Previous: Sports and the sexual abuse of children

Update: Santorum supports firing.