Arlen Specter announced today that he will be running for reelection in the 2010 as a Democrat, a defection from the electorally weakened Republican party.

Specter is not a Penn State alumnus (he attended that other school with Penn in its name) but he has spent a fair amount of time in State College over the years. In fact, he held a town hall meeting here just this fall. Here’s the full gallery of pictures from Specter’s visit to State College.

But here’s the real reason we’re posting about Specter: that picture on the right. It ran on Wonkette this morning with no caption on a post about Specter’s partisan flip-flop.

We were intrigued. Where could such a picture have come from? We did a little research and I’m frankly stunned with what we found.

We all recognize that Specter is posing with our favorite furry, the Nittany Lion, but guess who is inside of the suit…

None other than President Graham B. Spanier himself.

Specter was in town on October 31 2000 to talk to students in the Willard Building, ostensibly about W’s encroaching election. Spanier decided that it was a good idea to DRESS UP AS THE NITTANY LION. Really. (The photo was taken by Greg Grieco, who still works for Penn State. Here’s the source link. And, for the record, here’s the Collegian article about that visit.)