Parole for Sirhan Sirhan?

I agree with Steve’s post about the California parole board’s grant of parole to Sirhan Sirhan, who assassinated Robert Kennedy. I do wonder whether Steve is being too optimistic in suggesting that Governor Newsom will overturn the parole board’s decision so as to improve his prospects of avoiding recall. But Steve is an informed observer of California politics, so I’m heartened by his optimism.

Perhaps Newsom will take into account the view of six of RFK’s nine surviving children. They have expressed outrage over the parole board’s decision.

The six issued a statement that says, in part:

We are devastated that the man who murdered our father has been recommended for parole. He took our father from our family and he took him from America. . . .We are in disbelief that this man would be recommended for release.

The signatories are former Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II, Christopher G. Kennedy , Courtney Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, Maxwell T. Kennedy and Rory Kennedy. Two of RFK’s children, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Douglas Kennedy, apparently support the parole board’s decision.

I was never a fan of Robert Kennedy. However, the statement that Sirhan “took him from America” isn’t hyperbole. Democrats might well have nominated RFK for president and, in that event, America might have elected him president. In this sense, the assassination was an offense against “our democracy,” to use a favorite term of Democrats these days.

Moreover, any cold-blooded murderer should be punished with a lifetime in prison, at a minimum. My view is that execution is the punishment that better fits the crime.

If Sirhan is released, it will reinforce the argument in favor of the death penalty. Opponents sell the notion that a life sentence is sufficient punishment for murder. But when murderers like Sirhan are paroled or, in the case of Weather Underground killer David Gilbert, have their sentence commuted, it demonstrates that lifetime sentences aren’t really that. (Even a lifetime sentence “without the possibility of parole” can be commuted.)

This is another example of the how American left plays the rest of us for suckers.

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