RFK assassin Sirhan wins parole with support of 2 Kennedys

Epic paywall fail

His life won't be easy on the outside, being so Institutionalised. Pleased he still has a brother.

U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin was granted parole Friday after two of RFK’s sons spoke in favor of Sirhan Sirhan’s release and prosecutors declined to argue he should be kept behind bars.
The decision was a major victory for the 77-year-old prisoner, though it does not assure his release.
The ruling by the two-person panel at Sirhan’s 16th parole hearing will be reviewed over the next 90 days by the California Parole Board’s staff. Then it will be sent to the governor, who will have 30 days to decide whether to grant it, reverse it or modify it.

Douglas Kennedy, who was a toddler when his father was gunned down in 1968, said he was moved to tears by Sirhan’s remorse and he should be released if he’s not a threat to others.
“I’m overwhelmed just by being able to view Mr. Sirhan face to face,” he said. “I think I’ve lived my life both in fear of him and his name in one way or another. And I am grateful today to see him as a human being worthy of compassion and love.”

Can we keep it to one thread?

Dammit.

We killed the wrong sort of famous person.

Newsom will probably overturn it.

Newsom should let him out & give him a map to the recall candidate’s whereabouts .

Don’t the Kennedys still have mob connections? I hope they get him wacked!

I will have ORDER!!!

Any word from Ethel Kennedy on this development?

[quote] Any word from Ethel Kennedy on this development?

I don't know, but I do know one thing - she's picks her nose.

He won't last long in the real world if people are able to locate him. He's better off in prison.

r11 dont we all??!!

I can’t imagine at his age that he is a threat to anyone. I thought he claimed amnesia, but it appears in this story that he is taking responsability.

I don't approve. He killed a Kennedy.

I didn't even know that he was still alive!!

R16 = a drooling Rosemary Kennedy in purgatory

Now 7 Kennedy kids have come out against paroling Sirhan. Naturally, nutjob conspiracy theorist RFK Jr was in favor of the parole claiming Sirhan is innocent. Maybe Sirhan's an anti-vaxxer like him.

They wrote a very strong statement . Asking the Governor to intervene. Robert Kennedy Jr is a nut. Good for them. The statement was just posted on Twitter if you want to read it.

Interesting. When Doug and Bobby came out in support of Sirhan's parole, I thought they were speaking on behalf of their whole family. Apparently they weren't.

This article says he was just denied parole.

What the fuck does his not being a threat towards anyone have to do with it? God what a brain damaged asshole people who think this way are.

His crime was killing a political Kennedy and the world is running out of those anyway.

Although I'm sure she has nerves of steel, just imagine for a moment what JFK's daughter Caroline might be going through. All the combined work her extended family has done in the cause of justice and fair treatment, for it to come to this?

This post is an opportunity for the triggered majority to reply about injustice, and human rights violations all over the world in general, condoned, perpetrated and supported by the Kennedys in particular. I'm giving you a lead here so you can cut and paste. DL now has its share of the lunatic woke fringe.

I doubt they'll stick around for too long because they seem to be afflicted with a whopping case of ADD. Not ADHD, because none of them are socially advanced enough to be called adults.

Good. He shouldn't spend his life in prison just because his murder victim was a celebrity. If he shot a janitor he would have been released years ago. 50 years in prison is too long unless you're a sadistic serial killer. I realize this is an unpopular opinion.

[quote] He shouldn't spend his life in prison just because his murder victim was a celebrity. If he shot a janitor he would have been released years ago

If Kennedy had been a janitor, the asshole wouldn’t have shot him in the first place. He wanted fame and notoriety, let him deal with the fallout. He literally changed the course of this nation for the worst. He can rot.

Why does he have a double name?

However Gavin said, nope.

If RFK had become President we wouldn't have had Nixon. No Nixon would mean no Reagan which means no Trump.

I would vote for him to get out.

[quote] If RFK had become President we wouldn't have had Nixon. No Nixon would mean no Reagan which means no Trump.

Are you saying this guy created an alternate timeline from what was really supposed to happen?

Duh ?

R25 don’t you dare diminish RFK by downgrading him to a mere “celebrity.”

Dollars to donuts you were born in the past 20 years and have no concept of what it was like in ‘68.

Fuck you.

Who killed David Kennedy?

Syringe Syringe

What will he do with his freedom? He's spent more of his life behind bars and out. He's 77. How will he make a living, with that notoriety. At best a book deal, a movie. But is his story that interesting, important as his act is historically.

R33, maybe they need to have some sort of corollary so they can understand. Is there someone like RFK?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?

Noped

How do we know he won't be emboldened to repeat his offense on someone else?

As much as I loved RFK - I had two framed photos of him on my office wall - he was not going to be president in 1968. His only - very slim - chance was to sweep the few existing primaries back then, but that hope was dashed when he lost in Oregon, a week before his assassination. The party machinery, which then had a firm grip on the nominating process, was still very much in the hands of LBJ, who, as we know, detested RFK.

^elected

[quote] Why does he have a double name?

His mother was a stutterer.

Years ago I read a book by some sorta journalist who claimed that Ari Onassis put the hit on Bobby because he was screwing Jackie and Ari wanted to screw Jackie.

R25 & R35 Do you read beyond the headline? He was denied parole.

People who assassinate politicians for for terrorist reasons should not be paroled.

Not to mention, the guy changed the course of human history. RFK would easily have beaten Nixon.

Not if wasn’t the Democratic nominee, R44. And he wasn’t going to be that year.

[quote]Not if wasn’t the Democratic nominee, [R44]. And he wasn’t going to be that year.

RFK had just won California. Humphrey and McCarthy were to two other potential candidates.

He was on the path toward securing the nomination and would have beaten Nixon as handily as JFK did.

First of all, R46, the ‘60 election was one of the closest, then, in history, so JFK didn’t beat Nixon “handily.” As to whether Bobby would’ve secured the ‘68 nomination, it seems highly unlikely. Yes, he won the California primary - although by a narrower margin than anticipated - but had just lost the Oregon primary (the first electoral defeat for a Kennedy). And he might well have gone on to win the NY primary. But the nomination process back then was very different then. As reflected by the fact that Humphrey didn’t enter a single primary, the party bosses were far more important in the decision-making process. And these party bosses ultimate boss was still LBJ, who was never going to allow RFK to gain the nomination.

Eldergay here. RFK is largely popular - like JFK - because he was assassinated. McCarthy had been the original threat to Humphrey. When RFK suddenly developed into a leftie (having been a rightwing warmonger most of his life), he would have been competing against McCarthy and they would have cancelled each other out. Humphrey would have won easily had Nixon not connived with the enemy to stall the Vietnam peace talks LBJ had initiated.

JFK won because Richard Daley and the mob screwed around with the votes in Illinois as a favor to Old Man Kennedy and LBJ pulled some sleight of hand to get Texas EC votes for JFK.

Why did LBJ like JFK but not RFK?

As the lawyers say, R49, I think you’re assuming facts not in evidence. I don’t think LBJ had any great respect or affection for JFK, although he may have appreciated his political skills. And he didn’t think JFK treated him poorly when he was Vice President. But you’re right that he had nothing but contempt for Bobby, who he thought of as upstart rich kid, and who treated him quite shabbily during his brother’s administration.

I don’t think HHH ever saw McCarthy as a threat in ‘68, R48. Like it or not, McCarthy was a spent force by the time Humphrey announced his candidacy in late April ‘68. McCarthy came in a surprisingly close second to LBJ in the NH primary - the first in the nation (there was no Iowa caucus) - which reflected the very deep division among Democratic voters & informed RFK’s decision in mid-March to announce his candidacy. Two weeks later, LBJ announced he would not run for, or accept, his party’s nomination.

Read Robert Caro's last two books about LBJ. LBJ could have advanced civil rights when he was VP - he knew where all the bodies were buried in the Senate and had Richard Russell wound around his pinkie. RFK was jealous of LBJ - LBJ had years of institutional experience and RFK got the job because he was the little bro.

Instead of exploiting LBJ's talents as the former Master of the Senate, RFK didn't want to do anything for civil rights beyond giving lip service. His only goal was getting his brother reelected in 1964 and he didn't want to lose the South. Never forget it was RFK who approved Hoover's wire-tapping MLK. RFK was never the saintly figure he's been painted as since his assassination. He was a ruthless operator first for his father and then for his brother.

When Hoover went to LBJ after the assassination to tell him he had MLK on wiretaps and gossiped about all MLK's extramarital exploits, LBJ told him "Martin isn't the first preacher to chase pussy and he won't be the last" and told him to cut the wiretap.

[quote] RFK was jealous of LBJ

As the unquestioned second most powerful person in the country, I hardly think RFK spent a second of LBJ's miserable years in the vice-presidency jealous of the man. If he thought anything of him at all, it was sheer contempt.

Problem with RFK is he had contempt for most everybody. He was his Daddy's ruthless little enforcer. But he knew nothing about legislation, had no contacts in the Senate after Joe McCarthy died and was actively disliked by almost everybody who resented the nepotism. RFK was furious that Sargent Shriver - who was much smarter and more qualified than he was - continued to work for LBJ and spearhead the Great Society programs.

the singularly most impressive feature about Robert F. Kennedy is that at the age of 40 he possesses the casual confidence of a man who knows that one day he is going to be president of the United States. It might not happen in 1968, and it might not happen in 1972 either. But Kennedy knows it is going to happen one day …

Kennedy grins. He receives 5,000 letters and 300 speaking invitations every week. Kennedy shrugs and says, believe it or not—it’s up to you—he just doesn’t think about the next six years. He agrees with a melancholy nod when it is suggested that he is a fatalist. “I just think there’s one time around, and you don’t know when it’s going to end, so it’s better to do what you can that’s productive now,” Kennedy says. “Kennedy is a fatalist, but one who won’t let anything interfere with his fate,” a White House assistant [to Lyndon B. Johnson] suggests. “Yes, I think that’s right,” Kennedy says softly, after long silence for thought, with a faraway look in his eye …

Yes, he has friends. In fact, at 40, Robert Kennedy has everything: He has money. He has youth. He has a power base. He has vast political experience for a man of his years. He has his brother’s name, and the older he gets, the more he resembles him—or is that fancy moving forward to capture the mind as memory slowly retreats? He has ambition (“Bobby, I appreciate your desire to lead this country,” Johnson once said sarcastically to him). He has a sense of duty. He has great intelligence. There is nothing he does not have except the presidency, and he even has the inner knowledge that this inevitably will be his too.

But he seems to stand amid all this like some troubled young man in white flannels, gazing at the grounds of his vast inherited estate, vaguely troubled and not knowing why. It seems to give him no sense of excitement, no real challenge, and it may be something which he feels deep within is not rightfully his own. He is his brother’s heir.

He is heir to the Kennedy glamour; Johnson is the nation’s first public figure, but Kennedy is its first public male celebrity.

He is heir to the tragedy of Dallas, to the fact that the American people feel guilt over John F. Kennedy’s death and must make retribution for it.

He is heir to what is apparently an unlimited treasure of public goodwill; the American people will forgive him anything. His national image, at this point, is golden and unassailable.

He is heir to a political party being administered in trust for the moment, consisting of a network of senators, congressmen, governors, mayors, state and county chairmen, and vast hordes of volunteer workers, many of whom came to power with his brother and wait now to serve him.

He is heir to the nation’s young, over 23 million of whom will come of voting age between now and 1972. He is heir to the very aura and mystique which surround such political riches, for there are few in the Johnson administration today who would deliberately offend a possible future president. He is heir to all of this, but it doesn’t seem to give him much satisfaction. He is heir to the White House, and he plans to claim it one day, but he appears to be able to wait for it.

It is this sublime confidence, this coolness, this disdain (many others have called it arrogance), that is most striking about the man. The political estate he has come into might not give him vast happiness and satisfaction, but—to the manner born—he has assumed ownership of it with assurance and deft control. That it belongs to him is a fact he takes for granted. He truly does want to be president, and he is moving toward it.

So what motivation did Sirhan have to kill RFK? I'm not clear. Can we talk about him, not just RFK.

R54 You're historically inept.

R56 RFK had announced just a week before Sirhan shot him that he was in favor of selling fighter planes to Israel. Sirhan is a Palestinian . No brainer.

Like many recent immigrants of that era, he was in love with the Kennedys. But that love turned into a betrayed, blinding hatred when he learned that RFK supported Israel in the ‘67 Six-Day War. He wanted him dead by the one-year anniversary of the war.

Thanks r58. Makes sense.

Thanks r58. Makes sense.

Bobby did not want JFK to pick LBJ as his Vice President candidate. He felt very strongly about it. But JFK did it anyway. And Johnson never forgot it.

Bobby was right. All those lost lives in Vietnam wouldn't have happened without Johnson and Nixon. JFK had a memo on his desk that he wanted the advisors pulled out of Vietnam. Johnson crumpled it and threw it in the trash when he first entered the Oval Office as President.

That's quite a leap, R62. First of all, you assume that a surviving JFK, himself a committed Cold Warrior, wouldn't have further committed the US into a ground war in Southeast Asia. Maybe. Maybe not. But then you assume that LBJ was the ONLY potential Democratic VP choice in '60 who, along with Nixon later on, who would've followed what was then conventional Democratic establishment foreign policy thinking. And even if only LBJ would've pursued an escalation of the war starting in '64, you have to acknowledge that, in all likelihood, LBJ was the ONLY Democratic president in this era who could've enacted sweeping civil rights legislation.

R62 bullshit - JFK and RFK were hawks. That's a history rewrite from Schlesinger and Sorenson. Their claims have since been discounted by historians as opposed to the hagiographers who made a profession out of writing bestsellers to Canonize the whole Kennedy family. Who was the trigger behind Vietnam? Robert McNamara.