In 1968 President Johnson was quite unpopular because of the Vietnam War. Robert F. Kennedy, the slain President John Kennedy’s younger brother, was the leading Democratic candidate. Just after winning the California primary, he was shot in the head in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

The assassin was Sirhan Sirhan, who was disarmed at the scene and sat on by Roosevelt Grier, a 6’5″, 284-pound former pro football star. If Roosevelt Grier is sitting on you, you aren’t going anywhere. There was no doubt of his guilt and he was convicted. He claimed not to remember the crime, but his diary revealed that he wanted to kill Kennedy because Kennedy expressed strong support for Israel, including selling it jet fighters. Sirhan was a Palestinian Christian Arab, who had lived in America since age 12.

Sirhan was sentenced to death, but this was reduced to life imprisonment during one of several moratoriums on the death penalty, as ordered by federal and state courts. At the time there was no sentence of life without parole, so Sirhan has repeatedly come up for parole. It was refused, until now.

Granted, Sirhan is probably no threat to anyone. But his crime was enormous. He not only murdered a human being, he also struck a terrible blow at the democratic process. One miserably small person told an entire nation: “No! You can’t choose your president. I in my wisdom will choose for you.”

I expect members of the Parole Board will sleep well tonight. They believe that the Earth is improved by Sirhan Sirhan walking free upon it. I, on the contrary, hold the opposite belief. I believe the Earth is like an algebraic sum. We can increase the total either by adding a positive number, or by subtracting a negative number. Sirhan Sirhan is a large negative number. He should have been subtracted long ago.