New York Daily News

Assassin’s creed

-

Here in New York, when a remorseles­s cop-killer or other notorious murderer has been sprung from prison by a clueless Parole Board, we’ve wished that there was some check on its powers. But our state doesn’t have such a review. Thankfully, California does, and thankfully Gov. Gavin Newsom has reversed the dunderhead­ed decision by his Parole Board to free Sirhan Sirhan, who murdered Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, as the New York senator was running for president.

The Parole Board approving Sirhan in August was based in part on the L.A. district attorney no longer making recommenda­tions on parole cases (a dumb policy); one of RFK’s children, Douglas, supporting release on compassion­ate grounds (which is a fair argument); and most troublingl­y, some weight given the conspiracy theory of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who says that Sirhan didn’t assassinat­e his father, someone else did. Maybe it was the same unknown mystery man who killed his uncle in Dallas five years earlier.

We must here note that RFK Jr. is also one of the world’s biggest public health threats, as a prime COVID conspiracy theorist who mongers fear about vaccines and pushes a sadly bestsellin­g book called “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health.” The dangerous screed is preying on the gullible, while spreading infection and death.

After the Parole Board bought the bilge, Ethel Kennedy and six of her and Bobby’s kids were aghast at the decision and pleaded with Newsom to override it. The governor’s nine-page veto, released Thursday, rejects the innocent man theory as nutso and correctly states that Sirhan’s long imprisonme­nt is not a legitimate reason for release: “Despite his 53 years of incarcerat­ion, Mr. Sirhan has failed to develop the insight necessary to mitigate his current dangerousn­ess and is unsuitable for parole.” Amen.

A Palestinia­n angered by RFK’s support of Israel, Sirhan killed RFK on the first anniversar­y of the SixDay War, when Bobby has just won the California primary. Prison is where he must remain.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States