The telos of the leftism’s new soft-on-crime mentality arrived today when a California parole board granted parole to Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. The Los Angeles district attorney, the leftist George Gascon, declined to send anyone from the DA’s office (the LA DA prosecuted Sirhan back in 1969, and as such is the prosecutor of record for Sirhan) to lobby against Sirhan’s parole. It had showed up to oppose Sirhan on all 16 prior occasions Sirhan came up for parole.
Two of RFK’s children apparently supported his parole (figures), while six of his children opposed it.
Who was Sirhan Sirhan? He is described today in one news report as a “a Christian Palestinian from Jordan, who has acknowledged he was angry at Kennedy for his support of Israel, and he broke down in tears when asked how he felt about the Middle East conflict today.” That’s quite a whitewash. His diary in 1968 contained this entry: “I advocate the overthrow of the current president of the fucking United States of America . . . I firmly support the Communist cause and its people.”
He is subject to deportation, and if so I expect he’ll be greeted as a hero in Gaza or the West Bank. Make book on it. There’s this telling detail in the news story: “At his 2016 hearing, he said he felt remorse for any crime victim but couldn’t take responsibility for the shooting.” He’s apparently been better coached for today’s hearing
His new defense lawyer, Angela Berry, said that “We can’t change the past, but he was not sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.” Narrowly true, but deserving of four Pinocchios from one of those fact-checking services, because Sirhan was initially sentenced to death, but had his sentence vacated by the Supreme Court decision that struck down the death penalty in California in the 1970s, and a life sentence without parole wasn’t in the statute book as a fallback then.
Governor Gavin Newsom has the power to overturn the parole board’s decision, and I’m thinking he will, simply because he is sinking fast in the polls ahead of the recall election in two weeks.
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