[Posted By Jake]

This week, the faculty committee at Penn State charged with investigating Professor Michael Mann came back with a verdict exonerating their embattled colleague. Despite being thoroughly exposed as a fraud by the leaked Climategate emails, and despite the fact that his hockey stick analogy might be the most discredited illustration in the history of modern science, Penn State "stands by their Mann".

Don't get me wrong. Loyalty is an underappreciated virtue. But loyalty to a global warming scam artist merely demonstrates the moral relativism of contemporary academics. Any student caught fabricating data,"the trick"; deleting contradictory research,"hide the decline"; and conspiring to prevent publication of alternative theories; would be quickly and summarily expelled. Apparently the campus eggheads regard one of their own differently, and felt compelled to whitewash this official inquiry.

Michael Mann is a faculty rainmaker, a global warming cash cow whose fund-raising prowess far exceeds the stereotypical classroom model. To expect this infamous scientific celebrity to abide by simple standards like honesty and integrity would be shackling a valuable resource unnecessarily. Best of all, his financial drawing power is invested in the great liberal dogma of environmentalism; Gaia the earth mother invoking the beloved cap-and-trade panacea.

Penn State is big business and Michael Mann is good for business. Graham Spanier, the President, makes $750,000 a year. Mrs. Spanier, an English professor in what seems a lucrative family arrangement, is good for another $120,000 a year. Big ticket academics can't live the lifestyle their elite status deserves with just tax and tuition dollars.

Michael Mann and his global warming scam doesn't happen without the insatiable appetite for money and power that infects our educational system at all levels. We have allowed this sad circumstance to happen and now we must demand credibility and accountability to fix it.